The Wedding Banquet (2025) Review: Andrew Ahn’s take on the metamorphosis of queerness from 1993 to 2025

Director Andrew Ahn is probably one of the most sought-after directors within the LGBTQ+ community, thanks to his storytelling skills portraying the abundant familial love that exists in today’s world.

In his retelling of Ang Lee’s 1993 version of ‘The Wedding Banquet’, Andrew steers clear from the prejudiced society prevalent in the past and instead embraces the newness of familiarity in the queer diaspora.

The reimagined story follows four individuals who form two separate couples: Chris (Bowen Yang) and Min (Han Gi-chan) who love each other; and two women, Lee (Lily Gladstone) and Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) who love each other.

However, owing to specific circumstances, one homosexual man and his lesbian buddy decide to get married specifically for the purpose of giving him a green card marriage in exchange for her receiving financial support to undergo IVF procedures. The jeopardy commences when chaebol Min’s grandma unexpectedly arrives in New York, insisting on a highly-publicized wedding.

The movie explores the reluctance in marrying your significant other even though you love them, purely as you are afraid you would end up hurting them. It also sheds light on the vitality and vibrance created within the LGBTQ+ community, whether it is through friendship, clubbing in trendy gay bars, residing together, heart-to-heart talks near a waterfall, Korean hanbok style wedding or simply, a familial approach. The openness to deal with difficulty and overcome hurdles exists in each of us, but can you really do it?

Andrew somehow manages to incorporate actual traditional Korean wedding sequences into the movie, infusing it with spectacular humour, rendering the act of marriage comical rather than sacred!

Lily Gladstone is perfect as usual, but Kelly Marie Tran and Han Gi-chan stole the spotlight through their performances. The innocence within his eyes coupled with his lovestruck attitude as ‘Min’ and Kelly’s seemingly abrasive persona as ‘Angela’ results in an anti-climatic laughter spiral when they decide to marry each other. All the moments that follow, including the opposite reactions of Lily and Bowen’s characters to the wedding announcement– are truly priceless.

The film also features Korean veteran actress Youn Yuh-jung as Min’s grandmother and Joan Chen as Angela’s mother. Min’s chaebol grandmom, Ja-young is living evidence that it is impossible to con old people, while Angela’s mother, May Chen’s fluency in Chinese will be a topic of envy.

Andrew creates an atmosphere of abundant love blended with the absence of stereotyping stigmas, tracing the intimacy of this constantly evolving community. The most accurate depiction of this is in the final scene– I am not divulging any information, just go and watch it for yourself!