The Wedding Banquet (2025) is a loose remake of the 1993 film from Ang Lee. (Complete with a script from James Schamus, a co-writer on both the original film and the remake.) The premise and themes are similar, but 30 years of sociopolitical changes have allowed for a film that goes much harder and farther in its depiction and exploration of same-sex relationships, unwanted pregnancies, and cultural differences. And truly, there was nobody more qualified for this particular job than writer/director Andrew Ahn, who previously brought us the criminally underappreciated queer romcom Fire Island.
So, what have we got here? Well, it’s a romcom about cultural misunderstandings and romantic entanglements between a cast of four lead actors. Buckle up.
We lay our scene in Seattle, at a charming little house where two pairs of same-sex couples live. Our de facto protagonist is Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), a bioscientist partnered with indigenous LGBTQ+ activist Lee (Lily Gladstone). The two have been struggling for quite some time to get Lee pregnant, but the IVF treatments simply won’t take. There are health risks and financial obstacles for trying again, and Angela is getting second doubts due to her own recurring mommy issues. Let’s put a pin in that for now.
Living in their garage, we’ve got Chris and Min, respectively played by Bowen Yang and Han Gi-chan. They’ve been dating for five years now, but Chris is so pathetically afraid of commitment that he keeps taking any possible excuse not to get married. Which turns out to be an especially huge problem when the plot gets going.
See, while Min is a fabric artist by trade, he’s also the unwitting scion of a multinational corporation headquartered in Korea and owned by his conservative grandparents. (His grandmother is Ja-Young, played by Youn Yuh-jung. We never meet his grandfather.) Min’s student visa is almost up, and his grandparents refuse to renew it. Thus Min is left with an ultimatum: Take a management job in the family business, or get deported back to Korea without a coin to his name.
Cowardly Chris refuses a green card marriage, so Min gets a terrible awful idea: Min (a gay man, remember) marries Angela (a gay woman, remember) so that Min gets a green card and Angela gets the money to pay for another IVF treatment. Naturally, the lie spirals out of control until everyone has to play along with this sham wedding for the sake of cultural homophobia and traditional concepts of marriage. Hilarity ensues.
To be clear, all four leads are perfectly funny and charming, a delightful ensemble to carry a romcom. But the real secret weapons here are in the supporting cast. There’s Kendall (Bobo Le), Chris’ little cousin, here serving as a snarky comic relief until they help Chris’ development in a heartwarming way during the third act. More importantly, there’s Angela’s mother (May, played by Joan Chen), who makes such a huge freaking deal about being an LGBTQ+ advocate to the point where it’s more about building up her own image than supporting her daughter.
Even when May is trying to be a good and supportive parent, she’s somehow still a shitty parent, and it’s screwing with Angela’s own confidence as a potential mother. This has the unfortunate knock-on effect of leading Angela to question whether she really wants to have a kid or if she only wants it because Lee wants it. This in turn leads to some bitter arguments between Angela and Lee, and it’s all downhill from there.
With all of that said, this is easily Ja-Young’s show. Yes, she starts out as a two-dimensional conservative homophobic geezer. But when she makes the trip over to Seattle, she gradually comes to learn more about Min’s friends and his art. In the process, she learns how to let go of the grandson she wishes she had and how to love the grandson she actually has. It’s a genuinely heartwarming development arc, unfolding in a heartwarming way that never feels forced or trite.
Alas, there’s not much more I can say about The Wedding Banquet (2025) without spoiling any major jokes or plot developments. All-around, it’s a sweet, heartfelt, thoughtful film about the mercurial definition of the modern family unit. There’s a lot of good stuff in here about generational trauma, the courage to be vulnerable, and our innate need to seek out relationships at the risk of heartbreak or failure.
The film is funny enough and romantic enough to sustain a light and breezy romcom through 100 minutes, but the LGBTQ+ angle and the ongoing culture clash are enough to bring some novelty. I love how Andrew Ahn keeps bringing new life to the threadbare romcom genre, and I hope he keeps doing what he’s doing. You won’t miss anything waiting for a home video release, but I strongly recommend giving it a watch at any rate.