Director: Andrew Ahn
Cast: Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, Han Gi-chan, Joan Chen, Youn Yuh-jung
Screenplay: Andrew Ahn, James Schamus
102 mins. Rated R for language and some sexual materials/nudity.

It’s safe to say that The Wedding Banquet has one of the buzziest ensembles of the year, with rising stars and tested veterans coming together for a remake of the 1993 Ang Lee-directed romantic dramedy. It’s almost poetic that the film played at MSPIFF 2025, where Lee was an honored guest of the festival. I was going in relatively blind, as I was aware of the original film, but I had not seen it yet. I merely trusted the filmmakers and this excellent cast to deliver, and indeed they did.

Angela (Kelly Marie Tran, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) and her partner Lee (Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon) have been trying unsuccessfully to conceive with IVF. Their live-in friend Chris (Bowen Yang, Wicked) is struggling to commit with boyfriend Min (Han Gi-chan, Where Your Eyes Linger). Adding to that, Min needs a green-card marriage to stay in America, but Chris refuses, so he offers to pay for the IVF if Angela agrees to marry him. This shaky truce among friends threatens to topple them all when extended family members arrive in town for the wedding.

The premise is more than a little zany, but director Andrew Ahn (Fire Island) is able to juggle the tonal shifts with a remarkable amount of confidence in his material, from a script co-written by Ahn and James Schamus, who helped craft the original 1993 film. Ahn is able to mine comedy from the drama without it coming off like a sitcom premise stretched to feature length. This extends to his handling of the increasingly escalating series of narrative struggles that befall our four main characters. The pacing is excellent, allowing us to watch them try to solve each problem right before the next complication. We’re never given the moment to breathe, and yet there’s a sense of hope all throughout that everything will be okay…eventually.

I adored this entire cast, each performer matching the energy required by the character. I could see the uncertainty in Bowen Yang’s Chris, the passion in Lily Gladstone’s Lee, the life in Han Gi-chan’s Min. Then there’s Kelly Marie Tran’s Angela, a wonderfully layered, often frustratingly complex, woman who has her life set in motion but isn’t sure if that motion is the right one for her. Tran has to do a lot of heavy lifting in the story, but she does so with ease. Add to that the always incredible Joan Chen (Didi) and Youn Yuh-Jung (Minari) as Angela’s mother and Min’s grandmother, respectively, and you have one of the best ensembles of the year. I particularly liked the energy that Yuh-Jung brought to the grandmother, who the ruse is initially intended for.

The Wedding Banquet is certainly an updated version of the 1993 film, but its central premise does seem to differentiate itself enough from its predecessor to mark its existence, and it contains some of the sweetest and funniest writing of the year, along with a tremendous cast that are more than just buzzy names. With strong comedy and tender drama in equal measure, director Andrew Ahn has crafted a remake that stands on its own and feels current, and the entertainment value of these characters and this story are more than enough to recommend.

4/5
-Kyle A. Goethe