REVIEW: ‘The Wedding Banquet’ Proves That Remakes Can Become New Classics

Remaking classics is difficult, especially when they contribute to cinema for multiple communities. Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet is essential for Asian American and Queer film canons. Its impact is immeasurable, and now Andrew Ahn picks up that cultural weight beautifully.

Ahn wrote and directed The Wedding Banquet (2025), with James Schamus, the original film’s co-writer, also writing on the film. Instead of adapting the original shot for shot, Ahn tackles the need to appease families and get a green card in a way that is done for the specific needs of 2025 communities—a story about queer-found families as much as romance.

The film’s core cast includes Bowen Yang, Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, Han Gi-Chan, Youn Yuh-jung, and Joan Chen. Chris, Min, Angela, and Lee are best friends. Angela lives with Lee in her family home, and Chris and Min live in their garage. To say they’re close is an understatement. While Lee and Min love their partners, the reality is that Chris and Angela are best friends and two parts of a codependent mess. But both couples are poised to take the next step in their lives.

The women want a child, and the men are more happy to become guncles. Only for Min, the next step is marriage. When Min proposes, Chris’ commitment-phobia kicks into high gear. However, he isn’t without merit. Unlike the group that is all out to their family, Min is still in the closet due in large part to his family’s status and traditional stance on marriage in Korea.

But when his chance to build a life in the US gets close to ending, and he is tired of his boyfriend’s inability to commit, Min makes a proposal. He and Angela will enter a green card marriage (which will also help keep his family out of his business) and, in return, with his friend Angela in exchange for expensive in vitro fertilization treatments for her partner, Lee. Get a marriage license, get everyone off of their back, and start building a family. But when Min’s grandmother (Youn Yu-jung) shows up unannounced, she requests that they have an elaborate wedding banquet instead.

Remaking a classic is endlessly difficult; still, Andrew Ahn succeeds with The Wedding Banquet (2025).

One part is a rom-com, and the other part is an emotional found-family drama. The Wedding Banquet (2025) is a story about accepting yourself as much as it is about your family accepting you. With the world substantially changed from what it was in 1993, Andrew Ahn creatively adapts the original core conflicts. Instead of one bisexual man and his inadvertent love triangle, Ahn gives the audience two couples that are essentially just a group of people doing anything they can to keep their little family intact.

Everything in The Wedding Banquet (2025) is complex, yet none feels too forced within the larger characters’ narratives. The eccentricities of their lives may be rom-com trope heaven (a genre that Ahn knows inside and out after Fire Island), but the tenderness that Ahn explores identity and connection through is unmatched. Whether between each other or their parents, the core group of friends and lovers are tasked with confronting realities about themselves and making choices that will shape the rest of their lives.

The important thing is that Andrew Ahn has given audiences a look at the personalities and complexities of love. Too often, in film and television, we see queerness represented through specific stereotypes, constrained by expectation, and turned into a homogenous identity. Given how Ahn handled directing Fire Island, it should be no surprise that more depth was added here.

For Lily Gladstone’s Lee, her character’s empathy and passion for becoming a mother are incredibly earnest. More importantly, she pushes Angela to speak up, air out her emotions, and start healing her relationship with her mother.

On that note, Kelly Marie Tran’s Angela is highly relatable. While her mother may look like the mom of the year to everyone in queer circles because of her loud support of her daughter and investment into LGBTQ+ events, to Angela, she isn’t. Instead of confronting the past with her mother, Angela lets it simmer, choosing to complain instead of hash out their past issues together. But for her part, Joan Chen plays a mother who puts herself at the center of everything but simultaneously is profoundly compassionate and tries to make up for her mistakes.

Han Gi-chan delivers a truly stellar performance. 

Then there is Bowen Yang’s indecisive but extremely in-love Chris. While he looks like he’s ready to let all of his life crash down around him by saying no to Min’s proposal after five years, he isn’t. Chris is stuck, not because he’s not in love with Min, but because he knows how much Min will sacrifice when he comes out. Min will lose his money, his family, and everything he has in Korea. But no matter how much Min pleads with him, he won’t accept having that on his conscience, even with Min offering him every reassurance.

Then, there’s Min. Han Gi-chan delivers the film’s most emotional performance. Acting opposite Youn Yu-jung, who plays his grandmother, Han is tasked with not just playing the deeply-in-love sad boyfriend because Chis won’t say yes. He also has to play a chaebol who doesn’t want to let his family down while pushing to live his life in America. As Min, Han delivers comedy, vulnerability, and an endearing charm that makes him an absolute standout of an already stellar cast.

Min and his grandmother are ultimately mirrors of each other. The respect they carry for one another is often not seen between such a significant generational divide, but it’s through their love for one another that they hold on to each other and allow themselves to learn from one another. Youn is a legend on screen, and with Han’s career just starting in 2019, seeing the two next to each other showcases what the future is like, and it’s bright.

I don’t know what else to say other than that The Wedding Banquet (2025) is just incredible. Andrew Ahn did what is extremely difficult: he lived up to Ang Lee’s classic and left his stamp on cinema in the process. This is a film that enters the Asian American and queer cinema canon with pride, heart, and a message that we desperately need in this particular space and time.

The Wedding Banquet (2025) premiered as a part of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and is in theaters now.