Weekend Watch: The Wedding Banquet
A mariage emergency
Image Credit: Bleecker Street/ShivHans Pictures
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, where I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, A new take on an Ang Lee comedy. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite, Threads/Instagram: @jammerwhite and Blue Sky: @jammerwhite.bsky.social
While there is usually some outpouring of dissent over remakes of films from the past, Andrew Ahn’s new take on The Wedding Banquet, an Ang Lee title from back in 1993 is something to be celebrated.
Because instead of simply copying the storyline Ahn, working alongside James Schamus (a rare case of the writer of the original helping to adapt their own script) has crafted a welcome, funny and heartfelt update.
In this contemporary take on the story, Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and her partner Lee (Lily Gladstone) have been unlucky with their IVF treatments, but can’t afford to pay for another round.
Meanwhile their friend Min (Han Gi-Chan), the closeted scion of a multinational corporate empire, has plenty of family money but a soon-to-expire student visa. When his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang) rejects his proposal, Min makes the offer to Angela instead: a green card marriage in exchange for funding Lee’s IVF.
But their plans to quietly elope are upended when Min’s skeptical grandmother flies in from Korea unannounced, insisting on an all-out wedding extravaganza…
Ahn, who previously made Fire Island is once again blending humour and emotion in an LGBTQ+-focused tale that has friends dealing with changes in their various relationships.
The core cast are all great, with Yang and Tran the comic dynamos while Gladstone and Han provide extra emotional layers. Around them orbits an ensemble that includes Joan Chen as Angela’s enthusiastic mother May, while Minari Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung is suitably imperious as Ja-Young, Min’s grandmother and the head of his family.
Dispensing with surface treatments of the topic, The Wedding Banquet digs into the comic complications and allows the characters to breathe while never forgetting to keep things grounded.
The Wedding Banquet is in US cinemas now. A UK date has yet to be announced.