Billed as a comedy of errors, The Wedding Banquet (2025) by Andrew Ahn is a heartfelt consideration of relationships, family, and the importance of community in the contemporary world. The movie was packed to the rafters with talent, and it shone through at every stage. It was liberally adapted from Ang Lee’s 1993 rom-com of the same name, with reinvented characters, a new script and featuring an ensemble cast. The cast comprised of Bowen Yang (Saturday Night Live), Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon), Kelly Marie Tran (Star Wars), and Han Gi-Chan (Where your Eyes Linger) with supporting roles from Joan Chen (Dídi) and Youn Yuh-Jung (Minari).
The Wedding Banquet opens with our first couple, lesbians Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) at an award ceremony where Lee’s mother May (Joan Chen) is receiving an award for queer allyship. They then leave to attend the art show of Min (Han Gi-Chan) and his boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang) who is also Angela’s best friend. It turns out that Chris and Min live in Angela and Lee’s garage, existing more or less as a happy micro-community where they do communal gardening and cook for each other. It seems like a quaint and perfect existence on the surface, but trouble is brewing.
Perhaps the biggest challenge of this new imagining is just how much content is contained within it. In truth, it feels like there are three separate rom-com’s worth of plot, baked into a single one hour and 43 minute film. I’ll pitch you the setup for each.
Rom-com one:
Angela and Lee desperately want to have a baby together, and Lee has just done her second round of IVF. Unfortunately it doesn’t take, and they don’t have the money to afford a third unsuccessful treatment. With Lee’s biological clock ticking, she suggests Angela does IVF instead, raising Angela’s unresolved trauma of her mother being initially unsupportive of her sexuality. Angela begins questioning her relationship with her mother, and the desire to have a child altogether.
Rom-com two:
Chris is a commitment-phobe who would rather be a birdwatching guide than finish his PhD on queerness. His boyfriend, Min, suffers from the desire to reject his family fortune and be a broke artist (PULP would have a field day). Min’s grandparents offer him an ultimatum: either take on the role of creative director at the film’s fictional representation of multi-billion dollar fashion conglomerate LVMH, or return to Korea (seriously, how much money do they have?). Min decides to take a third option and propose to Chris, throwing aside his family fortune to stay in the US with the love of his life (and also get a green card). Chris summarily rejects this, scared of his feelings and unable to commit.
Leading to… rom-com three:
Min and Lee have a sham marriage. Min gets his green card, gets back at Chris, and Lee and Angela get the money to do another round of IVF. (Considering that Min and Chris are tenants of Angela and Lee, this being an easier solution than jacking up their rent somewhat baffles me). But uh-oh, Min’s grandmother, Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung) comes to ensure the wedding is smooth. Then, at her bachelorette party, Angela lets slip some of her insecurities, and Chris rejects a second proposal from Min, leading to these best friends getting blackout drunk, and waking up in bed with each other naked, days before the wedding.
With so much act one set up, what follows is an action packed and dense emotional rollercoaster, with so many emotional threads charting it feels like writing a grocery list (see below).
Protagonist emotional plotline grocery list:
– Finding family in community x4
– Dealing with family trauma surrounding coming out x3
– Learning how to open up x2
– Dealing with their partner having an affair x2
– Confronting one’s own insecurities and moving forward x2
– Overbearing Asian older lady x2
– All my parents are dead x2
With a runtime totalling 0.47 Brutalists, this is no mean feat. Yet rather than feeling bogged down in script and plot points, the film is a joy to behold. It is a light, boisterous affair at every turn. The writers are sharp and witty, the dialogue is stuffed full of some of the funniest rom-com performances I have ever seen. There are several moments where the entire audience are guffawing in their seats.
However, this is a film centred around compassion and care. These characters are brought back together, again and again, through the overwhelming totality of their own love for one another. Not just romantic love, but love of their friends, and their community. They celebrate the highs and are there to pick each other up from the lows.
This sentiment is emphasised by the film’s score. Where one would traditionally expect a contemporary rom-com to be underscored by high energy pop music, the audience is instead treated to a more ambient, orchestral score, reminiscent of classic forms of cinema in the older Hollywood style.
Additionally, considering how hectic the plot is, the cinematography really isn’t afraid to be slow. The visual aesthetic was defined by a collection of long, slow shots throughout that conveyed a lovely sense of intimacy, personhood, and space. Conversations were often one or two takes. There were no quick cuts. The cinematography gave the characters time to talk and be present.
The writers also made the conversations feel genuine and heartfelt, and for all the insanity, this is a film about emotion. Exploring what it is to be gay, what it is to have a queer family, and everything that comes with it. It is centred around appreciating community and demonstrating how you don’t have to be biologically related to a person to care about them.
The Wedding Banquet isn’t about the titular event itself. The high-octane stuff is surreal and hilarious but it’s underpinned by an overwhelming sense of care and of support. It draws a beautiful message about family and caring out of all the insanity, and I cannot commend it enough.
The Wedding Banquet is playing in cinemas now.
