I didn't even realize that The Wedding Banquet was a remake of the 1993 Ang Lee film of the same name until the missus claimed we'd seen it at a local art house theater. I honestly don't recall seeing it, but if so it was 32 years ago, so let's see what this updated version has to offer. (Obviously, I can't compare it to the original.)
Kelly Marie Tran (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) stars as Angela Chen, a Seattle lesbian whose mother, May (Joan Chen, Twin Peaks), is such a performative ally with the local PFLAG chapter it's driving her crazy. Her partner, Lee (Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon), is struggling to have a baby and after their second attempt at IVF fails, there's a question of whether they have the finances to try again and whether Lee's body can handle it. Angela doesn't want to carry the baby due to her fraught relationship with her mother.
Living in their garage is Angela's bestie from college, Chris (Bowen Yang, SNL), with whom she had a one-off fling, and his boyfriend Min (Han Gi-chan in his film debut), an artist and fashion designer whom Chris is refusing to marry though his visa will soon expire requiring him to return to South Korea. Adding to the pressure is a call from Min's wealthy grandmother, Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung, Oscar winner for Minari), telling him it's time to come home and join the family business empire.
While marrying Chris would get Min a green card, Chris fears that since Min isn't out his intolerant grandfather will cut him off. Fed up, Min proposes to Angela with the added benefit that he will pay for Lily's next IVF treatment. During her bachelorette party, Angela and Chris manage to PO Lee and Min, making them leave the club, and after a lot of drinks they wake up together in the garage and you have one guess as to what happened and what the ramifications will be.
Things escalate when Min calls to say that Grandma has come to America and they have about 45 minutes to "de-gay" the house before they arrive. After a frantic scramble, Min arrives with Ja-Young, introduces her to his fiancé Angela, and within minutes Ja-Young calls BS on the whole charade proving she's old, not stupid. After explaining the truth, she agrees to cover for Min if they go through an elaborate wedding ceremony which will be publicized back home. Of course, everything goes wildly wrong and hijinks ensue.
What's refreshing about The Wedding Banquet is that rather than being the usual Hollyweird celebration of the cartoonish perfection of gay people, the characters are messy complicated people who happen to be gay. Too many movies with gay themes believe the only thing that matters is the sexuality and how perfect it is and how mean straight people oppress them. Here the story is about people who are gay, not GAY people and the difference makes all the difference. With some tinkering the story could've been about blacks and whites, different religions or nationalities because at its core it's about people and their foibles and fears whereas lesser GAY movies are all about the GAY all day, forgetting the people. (See my review of the horribly-titled Bottoms for similar observations.)
Poor Tran has had a hard career road since a-hole spudboy "Ruin" Johnson abused her in his vandalism of Star Wars by stuffing her in a formless jumpsuit costume with a bad haircut as Rose Tico in The Last Jedi. Johnson wanted to deconstruct attractive Asian characters in movies (along with destroying the most valuable IP in entertainment) and the fandom-hating media promulgated the smear that RAAAAAAAAACIST nerds bullied Tran off social media when the reality was that racist liberal media hacks were protecting pasty potato Johnson's travesty by using her as a human shield. Note that co-star John Boyega, whose Finn character was also mistreated, wasn't used even as Disney shrank him down on the posters for China because those audiences don't like black actors. (But it's Americans who are racists?)
But I digress. Anyway, Tran first resurfaced on my radar as a heavy on the final season of Netflix's Sweet Tooth and she's really good here as well, finally showing off some acting. Gladstone is good as well and Yang manages to get away from his usual "Gaysian" persona he's plied for years on SNL. Youn shows her Oscar wasn't a fluke with another sly savvy performance where she leverages her age and others presumptions of it against them.
Co-writer James Schamus - a frequent collaborator of Ang Lee's having written eight films for him including the original Wedding Banquet (which is sadly unavailable to stream anywhere at this time) - has updated his original story of a gay man who offers to marry a woman needing a green card to keep his boyfriend secret from his family (I skimmed the Wikipedia synopsis. Sue me.) changing Chinese to Korean and tweaking the genders. Since I can't compare with the original, I'll withhold judgement other than to wonder why this version of The Wedding Banquet doesn't include, well, a wedding banquet? It should've been retitled The Wedding Ceremony or something.
Heartfelt and amusing, The Wedding Banquet may be overlooked because of people's aversion to gay themes or dismissed as a remake, but it's not woke and actually quite traditional in the end, in a manner of speaking.
Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.
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