Fire Island director, Andrew Ahn, turns his sights on the classic Ang Lee-directed queer Asian dramedy The Wedding Banquet with his latest film. Updated for the 21st century, the remake focuses on an ensemble of queer characters, led by comedian Bowen Yang and Star Wars actor Kelly Marie Tran. This time around, however, the antics and hijinks are put on the back burner for an intense and confusing ride.
About The Wedding Banquet
In The Wedding Banquet (2025), we follow two couples. There’s Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), a scientist with mother issues, and her partner, Lee (Lily Gladstone), who is desperately trying for a baby. But IVF is expensive, and Lee’s body can only take so many attempts at it. They need to act fast, but how?
We also have Chris (Bowen Yang), a birder and guide, and his partner, Korean art student Min (Han Gi-Chan). They live in Lee’s guesthouse. Their relationship hurdle is that Chris is … insecure? Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. Min is 1,000 percent committed to their relationship. He even plans to give up his family and his family fortune just to be with Chris. But Chris keeps turning him down, supposedly because he doesn’t want Min to lose his money, but it’s all a bit vague.
Seeing the predicament the four of them are in, Min hatches a plan—he and Angela will get married so that Min can get a green card and avoid working in his family business back in Korea, and Angela can get the money to pay for the IVF. It’s preposterous, but it could work. Everything is going swimmingly, until Min’s grandmother Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung) arrives from Korea expecting a big wedding bash.
So, Uh, Where Exactly Is the Comedy?
I feel lied to; I saw the trailer for this film and laughed uproariously throughout. I knew I had to watch The Wedding Banquet because I needed a laugh riot. But what did I get? Decidedly not a laugh riot. Even if you haven’t seen the original 1993 classic, the one thing you’d know about it is that it is funny, hilarious, even. That’s what I expected going in. And did I mention the trailer? How did the film marketed in that trailer turn into the drag I watched?
RELATED: Movie Review: Sinners
The biggest issue with the film is it can’t find the balance between the comedy (which is non-existent) and the drama—and this is because the pacing is completely off. It’s not even a rollercoaster; it’s a busted rollercoaster, screeching slowly up and down the tracks.
Andrew Ahn co-wrote this remake with one of the original’s writers and frequent Ang Lee collaborator, James Schamus. I’m certain that that’s where the great disconnect happens. This remake feels beholden to the original—it wants to meet and subvert the story beats of the OG, while also plotting a narrative of its own. The issue is, it does justice to neither path.
The Stakes Aren’t High Enough
Worse, the script tramples its ability to be funny. Everything is so dramatic and intense. Most of the film takes place without any music to underscore its potential for comedy. There are some funny moments, but, for the most part, The Wedding Banquet fights itself to be a remake and an original.
RELATED: Movie Review: The Amateur
The new film is set during a time when marriage is an option for all couples and sexuality is not taboo in the US (for now anyway), but the same can’t be said about several other countries, including South Korea. With that in mind, The Wedding Banquet would have worked if it were a clash between East and West. Yet that clash is significantly minimized since the spotlight is on the interpersonal issues of the characters. Min’s grandmother doesn’t arrive till late in the second act, and then, too, she’s not as big a threat as she was made out to be. The stakes are never high enough.
This Cast Deserved Better
I am struggling to rate the performances in The Wedding Banquet, because, again, I went in thinking this was going to be hilarious. This is why I don’t watch trailers, people. They lie.
Most of the cast does an incredible job, especially with the dramatic side of the story. Kelly Marie Tran handles what the script gives her really well—what would it have been like had she needed to lean into the comedic side? Who knows, but I would have loved to see it.
RELATED: Movie Review: The Ballad of Wallis Island
I was so excited to see Lily Gladstone in this film. They have a substantial role at the start, and of course, kill it as a mature, put-together woman looking to start a family, but then they get sidelined for the majority of the film. Gladstone also gets some of the funnier dialogue and reactions, and they’re just so good at everything.
Joan Chen as Angela’s mother, May Chen, is criminally underutilized. She’s got such a captivating presence and star power that the limited screen time and character development she was given made no sense.
Youn Yuh-jung is wonderful in her role. She’s an effortless scene-stealer. There’s one scene—honestly, a genius one that was the rare bright spark in this confusion of a film—where we follow Ja-Young as the chaotic foursome argue and run around and leave, and it’s fascinating watching her process this chaos. We needed more of her.
RELATED: Movie Review: Black Bag
Left on the Cutting Room Floor
Someone explain what happened with Bowen Yang’s character, because he is underwritten to the point where he doesn’t make sense. Chris is there because he needs to be there as an obstacle. It feels like a lot of Chris’ scenes were left on the cutting room floor. His backstory is alluded to, and yet, nothing is revealed. This isn’t Yang’s best performance. He underplays Chris’s confusion and hurt—he’s like a cardboard cutout at times.
Han Gi-Chan is the only person in this film who acts like he’s in the movie The Wedding Banquet trailer claimed to be. He’s so funny, and over-the-top, and expressive. He’s the star of this show, and a delight every time he comes on screen. The loudest laughs were because of him. I hope he gets to be in more Hollywood fare now.
A Disappointing, Chaotic Mess
At the start of the screening I attended, they played a video of director Andrew Ahn talking about how he watched the Ang Lee film when he was eight and how it shaped his filmmaking. He was hesitant to remake the classic, but thought to approach it with a question about gay marriage—in a time when gay marriage is possible, should it be? Once you watch the remake, you realize that Ahn’s script is an attempt to answer that question. Except, I don’t understand who else is asking that question, and why they would. One doesn’t have to get married if they’re gay—all anyone wants is the same options and choices as everyone else. The premise of the film is moot, and that’s where it loses its way.
RELATED: Mickey 17 Spoiler Review
We love ourselves some disappointing, chaotic and messy characters, but The Wedding Banquet doesn’t know how to develop the characters as people. You don’t dislike the characters; you simply don’t understand them. The stakes feel sanded down; the comedy is virtually absent. The romance, when present, is cute, but the film is far more interested in answering a question no one is asking. Also, where’s the banquet?
The Wedding Banquet opened in theaters on April 18, 2025.
