The Wedding Banquet – Film Review

Andrew Ahn’s 2025 remake of The Wedding Banquet is a modern romantic comedy that gracefully walks the tightrope between cultural commentary and crowd-pleasing charm. Co-written by Ahn and veteran screenwriter James Schamus (who penned the original 1993 Ang Lee classic), this new interpretation brings contemporary nuance, broader queer representation, and a culturally richer palette to the beloved premise. With a strong ensemble cast led by Han Gi-chan, Bowen Yang, and Kelly Marie Tran, the film feels both intimate and expansive, poignant yet joyfully absurd in the best rom-com tradition.

Set in a gentrified, globalized Los Angeles with threads reaching back to Seoul, the 2025 Wedding Banquet reimagines the core conceit of a sham marriage gone wildly out of control. At its heart is Min (Han Gi-chan), a Korean-American artist and dutiful grandson caught in a web of expectations. He’s weary from years of navigating his relationship with his commitment-averse boyfriend, Chris (Bowen Yang), and increasingly desperate to appease his aging grandmother Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung), who yearns to see him married before her health deteriorates further.

Rather than a bureaucratic necessity, this version repositions the green-card marriage as a transactional favor between friends: Min agrees to marry Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), a bisexual friend from their queer community, in exchange for helping her and her partner Lee (Lily Gladstone) afford an expensive IVF procedure. What begins as a quiet elopement spirals out of control when Min’s sharp-eyed grandmother flies in from Seoul with the iron will and deep pockets to throw a lavish traditional wedding banquet — one that becomes a powder keg of secrets, suppressed identities, and cultural expectations.

Han Gi-chan delivers a deeply sympathetic performance as Min — restrained, neurotic, yet emotionally layered. There’s a constant tension in his eyes: the pressure to please, to belong, to be truthful without disappointing anyone. His chemistry with Bowen Yang’s Chris is authentically messy. Yang dials down his trademark snark for a subtler portrayal of a man unsure of what long-term love looks like. His Chris is selfish and lovable in equal measure, and Yang allows his vulnerability to bleed through, particularly in a surprisingly raw confrontation scene with Youn Yuh-jung’s formidable matriarch.

Youn, as expected, is a scene-stealer. Her Ja-Young is sly, commanding, and emotionally intelligent beneath her traditionalist exterior. She doesn’t just play a stereotypical meddling grandmother — she imbues the role with grace and a slow-burning complexity that subtly anchors the film’s emotional arc. Meanwhile, Joan Chen brings both humor and pathos as Min’s mother, May Chen, who suspects more than she lets on but wrestles with generational and cultural silence around queerness.

Kelly Marie Tran and Lily Gladstone are a delightful pairing. Tran, in particular, shines as Angela — sharp-tongued, full of comedic timing, but never reduced to a caricature. Her complicated feelings about the arrangement — excitement, guilt, sisterhood — are all rendered with a realness that transcends her supporting status. Gladstone plays Lee with quiet dignity and strength, making even brief scenes resonate with emotional depth.

Andrew Ahn directs with a careful blend of warmth and irony, allowing the absurdity of the situation to unfold with gentle patience. The banquet scene itself — a nearly 20-minute set piece that explodes in a collage of clashing traditions, drunken relatives, karaoke, and unraveling secrets — is the heart of the film. It’s chaotic, hilarious, and layered with emotion, capturing both the beauty and pressure of familial expectations.

Ahn leans into the contrasts: western modernity vs. Korean traditionalism, chosen families vs. blood ties, and love born of convenience vs. love that demands vulnerability. His visual language reflects this duality — muted pastel color palettes in the early LA scenes give way to rich reds and golds once the family arrives, visually marking the encroachment of tradition into Min’s carefully curated life.

One of the most significant changes from the original film is the shift in how queer identity is framed. Where the 1993 version was shaped by the need for closeted characters and subtextual yearning, the 2025 edition is much more open — and necessarily more complicated — about queerness. Characters live openly, navigate fertility and partnership issues, and are part of a diverse, supportive LGBTQ+ community. But that openness doesn’t mean the characters are free from internalized shame or family tension — Ahn and Schamus wisely recognize that identity doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

The film also earns points for including a broader spectrum of Asian and queer experiences — not just through Korean and Chinese cultural elements, but also through characters like Angela and Lee, who represent a different set of intersections. Their desire for a child isn’t a tacked-on subplot, but thematically parallels the film’s broader interest in what makes a family real: blood, truth, love, or some compromise of all three.

Despite its emotional richness and sharp humor, the film occasionally falters in pacing. The first act moves briskly, but the second leans heavily on exposition and multiple subplots that stretch the narrative thin. Some characters, like Joan Chen’s May, deserved a bit more interiority — her conflict between support and silence feels underexplored. Similarly, the tension between Min and Chris is sometimes resolved too neatly for a couple with such deep-seated issues.

Tonally, the film shifts frequently — from screwball comedy to poignant drama to cultural satire — and while Ahn handles this with more success than most, there are moments where it feels uneven. Some of the film’s emotional payoffs are slightly rushed, particularly in the third act where secrets come to light. You get the sense that the filmmakers want to resolve everything in time for the credits, which dampens the impact of some otherwise excellent character work.

The Wedding Banquet is a warm, funny, and beautifully performed film that pays respectful homage to the original while updating it for a new generation. It succeeds because it understands that the stakes of a “fake marriage” are never just bureaucratic or comedic — they’re emotional, cultural, and deeply human. While its storytelling occasionally wobbles under the weight of its ambitions, Andrew Ahn’s direction, coupled with standout performances and sharp writing, deliver a heartfelt romantic comedy that’s as much about self-acceptance as it is about love.

It might not be perfect, but it absolutely earns its place at the table.