The Wedding Banquet, dir. Andrew Ahn

Remaking something like Ang Lee’s sham-marriage farce The Wedding Banquet (1993) is admirably gutsy. When a movie comes so much closer than most films to perfection, why mess with it? Andrew Ahn, who directed and co-wrote (with one of the original’s co-screenwriters, James Schamus) the update, has said he was inspired to put his own spin on the movie because it was so formative — it was the first queer movie the director, who is gay, ever saw — and because, in his late 30s, the film’s emphasis on marriage and kids resonated anew.

Ahn’s version isn’t a straight-up remake. It retains much of the original’s frenzied plotting but makes some tweaks so that it goes like this: Min (Han Gi-chan), a Korean artist living in Seattle whose visa is due to expire soon, offers to pay for his friend Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and her girlfriend Lee’s (Mountlake Terrace High School graduate Lily Gladstone) third attempt at IVF if Angela agrees to marry him so that he can get his green card. (Min’s Bowen Yang-portrayed boyfriend of five years, Chris, is rigidly commitment-phobic.) 

Read the full review at 425.

Photo credit: Luka Cyprian/Bleecker Street