Cynically, you could roll your eyes at a film industry so bereft of original ideas it’s even remaking its arthouse hits. But The Wedding Banquet, Ang Lee’s’ 1993 breakout feature, is actually an inspired vehicle to revisit. Thirty years ago, gay marriage wasn’t legal in America, and most general audience LGBTQ narratives were about coming out, or getting AIDS. Why not bring the dramedy – well-liked but long in the tooth, not to mention unavailable on streaming – up to 21st century code?
The original film’s plot – a bisexual man marries a straight woman in order to get her a green card and appease his Taiwanese parents, who don’t know he’s already in love and shacked up with another guy – expands here to four parties party to the titular sham wedding. If that sounds like an opportunity for extra comic hijinks, you’ll want to dial down that expectation. Despite a trailer that’s selling this thing like it’s a bouncy rom-com, and despite the presence of SNL star Bowen Yang and the pedigree of director/co-writer Andrew Ahn (Fire Island), The Wedding Banquet is, if not strictly a drama, definitely drama-ish.
“-ish” is a noncommittal person’s security blanket, and noncommittal is the word for best friends Angela (Tran, Star Wars’ Rose Tico) and Chris (Yang). They’re both happily partnered – Angela with the slightly older and cooler Lee (Gladstone), Chris with sweet, puppyish artist Min (Gi-Chan, charismatic in his first English language role) – and they’re all more or less communally living in Lee’s house in Seattle (well, Vancouver-for-Seattle). But the anxious and angsty Angela and Chris are having trouble committing to the same visions as their superhumanly patient partners: Lee’s dream of having a family with Angela, Min’s hope to marry Chris.
Min’s expiring student visa gives the film a direction to move in. (The script, which Ahn wrote with one of the original film’s writers, arthouse legend James Schamus, moves at a pace you might generously call unhurried.) Min needs to marry, and if Chris won’t commit, then why not a woman to satisfy his wealthy Korean grandparents who don’t know he’s gay? Meanwhile, Lee and Angela could really use some extra cash to pay for another round of IVF. And there it is: a groom, a bride, a bribe. Everybody wins, right?
Naturally, it all plays out much messier than that – feelings! So messy! – which The Wedding Banquet explores with a sensitivity that borders on excessively polite, as if it didn’t want to overstep and probe its characters too deeply. Of the ensemble, Tran and Yang have nominally more screentime, or at least story focus, and they sometimes strain to satisfy the demands of the drama-heavy parts, especially when they have only each other to play off of. But how beautifully they get lifted by the film’s more seasoned cast: Minari Oscar winner Youn Yuh-Jung, charting Min’s grandmother’s evolving attitudes with elegant minimalism; Dìdi’s Joan Chen, goosing the film every time she pops in as Angela’s exasperating mom, who treats allyship like a competitive sport; and Killers of the Flower Moon’s Gladstone, making the film 50% more interesting on her energy alone, which somehow harmonizes tranquil and steely, pacifist and (metaphorically) packing heat. In a film that pays sweet tribute to chosen families, these three actors elevate their less-tested colleagues. That’s a kind of allyship, too.
This article appears in April 18 • 2025.