Andrew Ahn’s 2025 reimagining of The Wedding Banquet breathes vibrant, contemporary life into Ang Lee’s 1993 classic, proving that some stories—when handled with heart, humor, and vision—grow deeper with time. While the original film offered a poignant reflection on gay identity and familial obligation in a pre-marriage equality era, Ahn’s version builds upon that foundation, crafting a richer, more complex tapestry of queer experience, immigrant culture, and chosen family in a world where acceptance still carries weighty caveats.
At its core, The Wedding Banquet (2025) is a screwball comedy of errors built on a foundation of very real, very modern anxieties: reproductive healthcare, green card limbo, generational trauma, and the fear of never being enough for the people we love. But what distinguishes Ahn’s version from so many modern remakes is that it doesn’t chase nostalgia. Instead, it revisits the soul of the original—its humanity, messiness, and quiet subversion—and expands it with new characters, conflicts, and cultural relevance.
The story centers on four leads: Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), her partner Lee (Lily Gladstone), Min (Han Gi-Chan), and Chris (Bowen Yang). Angela and Lee are struggling to afford another round of IVF after a string of unsuccessful treatments. Min, a closeted artist and the heir to a powerful Korean conglomerate, is about to lose his student visa. After his proposal to his boyfriend Chris is turned down, Min offers to marry Angela in exchange for funding Lee’s IVF treatment. The plan is simple: a quiet courthouse wedding. But chaos arrives in the form of Min’s formidable grandmother (Youn Yuh-Jung), who insists on a full-blown traditional Korean wedding, igniting a collision of secrets, culture, and expectations.
This reimagining thrives not only on its layered storylines but on its fully embodied performances. Tran and Gladstone ground the film with tender emotional gravity. Their chemistry as a couple feels lived-in and authentic, portraying a relationship built on deep love but strained by financial pressure and unresolved fears. Gladstone in particular gives Lee a quiet strength—her desire to start a family stems not only from personal longing but from her Indigenous Duwamish roots and a duty to maintain her family’s legacy. Tran's Angela wrestles with fear—of becoming a mother, of letting her partner down, of being seen as lesser by her own mother (Joan Chen, in a sharp and deeply human performance).
Meanwhile, Yang and Han are a revelation as the film’s other central duo. Yang brings his trademark wit and neurotic charm to Chris, who, despite rejecting Min’s proposal, can’t quite walk away from their connection. Han is stunning in his English-language debut, delivering a performance that moves between playful, heartbroken, and romantic with remarkable ease. Their relationship brims with contradictions—love, guilt, unspoken longing—and the film wisely avoids easy resolutions, choosing instead to explore the complexity of two people navigating intimacy under impossible expectations.
Ahn’s direction is warm, sharp, and tonally nimble. He skillfully juggles farce and heartbreak, offering viewers the kind of cinematic experience that allows for belly laughs one moment and quiet tears the next. Drawing from his own experiences as a queer Korean American filmmaker, Ahn infuses the film with deeply personal reflections on identity, belonging, and generational dissonance. His lens is gentle but precise, rendering each character not as symbols, but as people—flawed, loving, overwhelmed, and trying.
Visually, The Wedding Banquet is rich with texture and intention. Cinematographer Ki Jin Kim gives the film a lived-in intimacy, balancing wide ensemble shots with quiet, observational close-ups that capture moments of vulnerability and isolation. Charlotte Royer’s production design and Matthew Simonelli’s costume work further support the film’s thematic commitment to home, memory, and identity. From the coziness of Angela and Lee’s house to the grandeur of the Korean wedding set, every space feels inhabited, emotionally charged, and distinct.
Much of the joy of the film lies in its comedic rhythms—dialogue that zips, unexpected reversals, and character beats that feel earned rather than manufactured. But it’s the film’s emotional honesty that leaves the lasting impression. Ahn doesn’t shy away from the difficult questions queer people ask themselves in moments of uncertainty: What does it mean to want a family? To be loved by one’s parents? To create one’s own? In doing so, the film honors the spirit of the original Wedding Banquet while expanding the conversation for a new generation.
One particularly moving subplot is the intergenerational arc between Min and his grandmother. Youn Yuh-Jung’s performance is as commanding as it is compassionate—her journey from enforcer of family tradition to quiet acceptance of her grandson’s identity is handled with nuance and grace. Offscreen, Youn’s own experience supporting her son’s marriage decades ago lends real-world resonance to her role, deepening its emotional impact.
In contrast, Joan Chen’s portrayal of Angela’s mother, May, bristles with fire and resentment, but also buried affection. Their fraught relationship becomes a mirror for generational clashes around womanhood, queerness, and self-determination. It’s in these intimate, often unspoken moments—between mother and daughter, lovers, friends, and family—that the film finds its greatest power.
What makes The Wedding Banquet so refreshing is its refusal to conform to genre expectations. It’s not quite a rom-com, nor is it traditional drama. It’s a film that resists easy categorization, just as its characters resist the limits of identity. It’s funny and sad, light and layered—expansive, to borrow Bowen Yang’s own word.
In the end, the titular banquet isn’t just a cover for a lie—it becomes a site of revelation, transformation, and, ultimately, acceptance. It’s a celebration not just of marriage, but of the messiness and beauty of queer lives, chosen families, and cultural inheritance.
Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet is a triumph: heartfelt, hilarious, and beautifully human. It doesn’t simply remake a classic—it reclaims and reimagines it for today, with all the joy and complication that entails. For anyone who has ever struggled to find their place in a family—or create one from scratch—this film offers not just recognition, but grace.
The Wedding Banquet is currently available on Blu-ray and DVD.