‘The Wedding Banquet’ Remake Serves Laughter and Love
Bells are ringing with queer love and romance in Andrew Ahn's funny, if formulaic, re-do of "The Wedding Banquet."
The makers — or re-makers — of The Wedding Banquet don’t exactly avoid stereotypes in their update of Ang Lee’s 1993 queer rom-com classic.
The new film, from Fire Island writer-director Andrew Ahn — co-written with James Schamus, who also co-wrote the original with Lee and Neil Peng — revolves around a couple of Subaru Outback-driving lesbians of the Pacific Northwest.
The point is that Angela and Lee, a research scientist and LGBTQ Center social services director, portrayed by Kelly Marie Tran and Lily Gladstone, are firmly, flannel-y entrenched in their queer lives.
So are their closest friends, fabric artist Min and soul-searching birder guide Chris, a gay couple of five years played by BL drama heartthrob Han Gi-Chan and funnyman Bowen Yang.
The foursome live in cozy cohabitation, with Angela and Lee sharing the charming house Lee’s dad left her, and Chris and Min together in the rustic backyard guest house. Trying to convince anyone that any of these four currently lives as a straight-arrow, happy homosexual set to marry someone of the opposite sex just might be a fool’s errand.
Yet, as in the original, a situation arises requiring that both couples fake it till they make it, pretending that Min, in the U.S. on a soon-expiring student visa from South Korea, and Angela, who’s Chinese-American, are engaged to be wed. By their agreement, he’ll obtain a green card, and, in exchange, help fund Angela and Lee’s expensive efforts to make a baby via IVF.
It’s extremely convenient for the plot that Min’s family is the kind of wealthy that their name emblazons the side of an office tower in downtown Seattle.
Less conveniently for Min, those gilded family ties keep him bound in the closet as far as his family’s concerned, and his Grandpa and Grandma hold the keys to his financial future. Hence, the sham marriage.
To appease Grandpa — the most famous gay-hater in Korea, according to Min — Min submits to an ultimatum from his Grandma, played by Minari Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-Jung. The Korean screen legend, magnetic as a proper rich lady who’s sharper than any of these kids she’s dealing with, practically steals the movie with her quiet authority, as Grandma shows up to plan a picture-perfect traditional Korean wedding.
There is, of course, another mother serving in this film, and with louder authority: Joan Chen as May Chen, mother of the bride. While the screenwriters generously supply every character some thread of drama, the film hits profound levels of nuance portraying the friction between Angela and May Chen (no doubt a fond reference to actress May Chin, who portrayed sham bride Wei-Wei in the original film).
Angela’s mother is winning awards from PFLAG for her zealous allyship now, but she wasn’t always so accepting. In an excellent scene between Chen and Tran, with Gladstone in mostly silent support, Angela confronts the roots of her reluctance to become a mother herself, even while she and her partner vigorously pursue parenthood.
At its heart, the movie examines the love and the work involved in building queer families, especially unconventional families like the one Angela, Lee, Min, and Chris have built.
It takes a lot of laughter, and the film lives up to that task, at times funnier than it is credible, as in a hilarious morning-after, “Did we hookup?” scene where the humor still can’t sell the hookup as believable.
Better are a couple of gags about lion dancers and busy drag queens, and a sweet Star Wars joke involving The Last Jedi co-star Tran. Then you have Joan Chen twerking on a lion dancer.
Yang is most in his element plying the comedy, but his commitment-phobe character is disappointingly underwritten. Providing Chris a chill younger cousin, Kendall (Bobo Le) as a sounding board doesn’t add much. And neither does Gi-Chan, who’s fairly wooden as Min, though he does get some of the movie’s best lines and dramatic exits. (And there are many dramatic exits.)
For Killers of the Flower Moon fans eager to see Oscar nominee Gladstone smiling, she proves an effectively subtle comedic presence, and also brings affecting vulnerability to Lee and Angela’s IVF drama.
As the film so assuredly represents, gay and lesbian couples who want to have and raise children must really, really want the work and responsibility of being parents — which is a blessing any kid should hope for from the people who brought them into this world.
The Wedding Banquet (★★★☆☆) is Rated R and is playing in theaters nationwide, including the AMC Georgetown 14 and the Regal Gallery Place in Washington, D.C. Visit www.fandango.com.
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