The Wedding Banquet (2025) is one of those rare films that functions more as another swing at bat than as a remake, and returning screenwriter James Schamus (The Wedding Banquet (1993); Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) scores at least a double with this one. The first film, the award-winning second film of Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon; Hulk), challenged the Gay-panic, post-AIDs epidemic view of the LGBT+ community of the 1990s. This year’s edition sees Andrew Ahn (Driveways), the director of 2022’s queer rom-com Fire Island, confront what progress has and hasn’t been made in the 30 years since. Not just a change in generational viewpoint, even the title of protagonist has rotated through the cast to a new angle, leading to an excellent leading team of Bowen Yang (SNL; Wicked) and Kelly Marie Tran (Star Wars: The Last Jedi; Raya and the Last Dragon).
L-R: Han Gi-Chan as Min, Youn Yuh-Jung as Ja Young, and Kelly Marie Tran as Angela in THE WEDDING BANQUET. Photo Credit: Luka Cyprian/Bleecker Street. Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street.
“What is this preposterous plan?”
There is a stiff deadpan to most of Bowen Yang’s acting parts, a distinctly millennial disinterest that can get a great laugh on SNL, but that’s not how he’s employed here. There are laughs to be found in The Wedding Banquet: an in-joke about Tran’s stint in the Star Wars franchise, the sight gag of a bootleg DVD of A Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), and about half the lines by Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon; The Unknown Country) or Joan Chen (Didi; Twin Peaks). But only a few come from Yang, because this film is a dramedy, not a comedy, and he’s playing it serious. A mid-30’s queer man accepted by his family and father-figure to his younger queer-cousin, he hasn’t actually committed to anything in years, showing up for everyone but himself, and never making a big deal about it. Yang’s performance takes aim at the supposed Millennial malaise, a generational anxiety about committing to … anything … in a world that has always shifted under them. Both Banquets are about a queer couple that arranges for a fake straight wedding to gain familial approval and an American Green Card. Previously, the groom was the focus. Here, it is Yang’s indecision and fear as the groom’s boyfriend that drives the scheme. This performance is a new stretch for the SNL mainstay, but Ahn uses their shared experience on Fire Island to draw out the best in Yang, who struggles to his feet in the first half of the film, but meets the occasion in the second.
L-R: Bowen Yang as Chris and Han Gi-Chan as Min in THE WEDDING BANQUET. Photo Credit: Luka Cyprian/Bleecker Street. Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street.
“Joke’s on you, my anxiety is generalized”
Hang Gi-Chan (Where Your Eyes Linger; Again My Life) stars as the groom and the apple of Yang’s eye, but his bride, played by Tran, is the real star of the show. Her character met Yang’s in college, hooked up once, then became co-dependent best friends. Ten years later, everyone lives on her girlfriend’s property, the boys in the garage, and she and Gladstone inside. She’s a thriving scientist, she and her girlfriend are trying to have a child via IVF, and her biggest problem is her over-bearing, queer-ally mother who’s more beloved for having a queer daughter than she is by that queer daughter. Tran, chased off the internet for daring to be a woman in Star Wars who didn’t wear a bikini, is back with a vengeance in this film. She excellently plays the confusion, despair, and angst of a modern queer woman who, for all her supposed liberations, still has to fake a straight marriage to afford the queer life she wants.
L-R: Lily Gladstone as Lee and Kelly Marie Tran as Angela in THE WEDDING BANQUET. Photo Credit: Luka Cyprian/Bleecker Street. Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street.
“As if a stupid Green Card is the only thing I ever wanted from you!”
Maybe the biggest laugh the film got out of me wasn’t a joke but an understatement. When the closed caption “[Mellow music playing]” came across the screen for the umpteenth time, I had to. The film is timely, sensitive, and indignant, and Ahn brings a naturalistic tone and style to the film’s modern problems. Hand-held cameras, shallow shadows, swirly bokeh making circles out of green leaves and only motivated light, it’s all effective to a point. In an attempt to stay in the minds of its leads, and maybe to stand out, key confrontations take place off-screen, focusing instead on the fallout from the distanced viewpoints of those who know our heroes, such as the ever-great Youn Yuh-jung (Minari; Woman of Fire) as the disapproving grandmother. You can feel the film put on weight in moments like these, and you can also feel the film refuse to lose it, even if it’s somehow 5 minutes shorter than the original.
L-R: Kelly Marie Tran as Angela, Lily Gladstone as Lee, Han Gi-Chan as Min, and Bowen Yang as Chris in THE WEDDING BANQUET. Photo Credit: Luka Cyprian/Bleecker Street. Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street.
The gimmick of The Wedding Banquet is recontextualized into the modern moment. The Millennial gays know this trope is tired, but they feel trapped by the systems of the world. Mixed in with the co-dependent relationships of queer-found-families, Ahn sprinkles in the burdensome cost of IVF conception and America’s crumbling healthcare system, the passive oppression of cooperating with the immigration system, and the politics of straight-passing in a world where you supposedly shouldn’t have to anymore. Not a film built on political arguments, this is a genre romantic-dramedy that acknowledges the plain truth: politics shape the world, and films about real people will collide with real politics. Progress is written in pencil, not ink, easily erased, and prone to fading with time if not reinforced. But you have to reach for that pen; no one’s going to do it for you.
In theaters April 18th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Bleecker Street The Wedding Banquet webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, In Theaters, Recommendation, Reviews
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