The Wedding Banquet (2025)

[BluBonnet]

This remake better be at least as good as the original... the US release date is April 18, 2025.

‘The Wedding Banquet’ Remake, Starring Bowen Yang and Lily Gladstone, to Open BFI Flare

Andrew Ahn’s “The Wedding Banquet,” a remake of Ang Lee’s 1993 rom-com starring Bowen Yang and Lily Gladstone, will open this year’s BFI Flare: London Film Festival.

The film, which is world premiering Monday night at Sundance Film Festival, will have its international debut on March 19 at London’s BFI Southbank with Ahn in attendance.

According to a press release, “The Wedding Banquet” is a “joyful comedy of errors about a chosen family navigating the disasters and delights of family expectations, queerness and cultural identity.”

The plot description reads: “Angela and her partner Lee have been unlucky with their IVF treatments, but can’t afford to pay for another round. Meanwhile their friend Min, 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 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.”

[BluBonnet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l61gmu9olZY

[Creed]

The Wedding Banquet - Rated R for language and some sexual material/nudity.

[Britnasty]

It looks great BUT, it’s Bleecker so they won’t market it properly, it’ll open poorly and be shoved onto digital and Blu-ray without any fanfare after 6 weeks.

[BluBonnet]

[BluBonnet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWy_IzW04YM

[BluBonnet]

Metacritic

[AnthonyGG]

Though it's being marketed as a rom-com, some of the humorous bits feel more tacked on as Andrew Ahn's film deals a lot more with the characters and some of the darker aspects of these same-sex relationships, particularly the one between Gladstone and Tran. I almost wish Ahn had eschewed all of the non-organic humor and just let the more natural dramedy emerge but overall I was charmed by this and it does offer some solid laughs along the way. I was just really feeling the more tumultuous material.

Also, love how Ahn shoots some scenes as if we're watching the interactions take place from an upstairs window peering down into a front yard and when he employs hand-held camera for an out on the town scene.

[BluBonnet]

Lee's original was largely perfect and we didn't really need a remake, which struggles to maintain enough momentum going to make up for the very predictable storyline.

Also, really awful they used Vancouver to stand-in for Seattle

[VanHiscers]

I’m gay and Asian. The thing is that the original is not simply a gay-themed romcom, all the significance of the original will be lost in translation with the changes in this remake.

In the original, the white boyfriend was meant to emphasize a bigger cultural clash, so making the couple both Asian diminishes that; there was also a political undertone in the original with the groom being from Taiwan with a bride from mainland China in a sham marriage: the original came out in 1993, one year after the 1992 Consensus where China and Taiwan agreed to maintain peace by focusing on common goals while “ignoring” differences temporarily.

[Show spoiler]What’s sillier is that they kept the storyline where one spouse also wants to get a green card. The problem is while both the original and the remake portray an immigration fraud, the one in the remake is unnecessary as it’s been more than a decade that gay couples can get immigration benefits through marriage in the U.S…

[BluBonnet]

It's a real shame the original isn't streaming anywhere (at least in the US)

[broadwaybobl]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

It's a real shame the original isn't streaming anywhere (at least in the US)

I believe it is available on Fandango at Home (which I still call Vudu, LOL!)

[BluBonnet]

Now streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime