Sundance 2025: ‘The Wedding Banquet’ is an Outstanding Remake
by Alex Billington
February 4, 2025
One of the best experiences at a film festival is walking in to see a film not expecting to care much about it, and walking out so blown away you can’t stop talking about it and thinking about it. This is what happened with me watching Andrew Ahn’s new take on The Wedding Banquet at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival this year. You never know when this will happen, you never know which film this will happen with, but when it does happen it’s my duty to make sure I spend some extra time and attention talking about the film. The Wedding Banquet is a 2025 remake of Ang Lee’s 1993 film of the same name (which I have not actually seen before). This version of the story is updated to focus on a group of four friends – a lesbian couple and a gay couple, all of whom live together in the same house in Seattle. They’re all best friends which plays into the story because their friendships / relationships start to crisscross when they start to decide what to do with their future and how to move forward together (or not, perhaps, if they can’t figure things out…). I laughed, I cried, I smile, I cheered, I wiped away tears. This is unquestionably one of my favorite films of the festival.
The Wedding Banquet is directed by Andrew Ahn as his fourth feature film, and written by Andrew Ahn and James Schamus. This is one of these films that is best experienced without knowing every twist & turn in the story before watching it. And I won’t discuss all of these moments because the emotional impact they have when they’re revealed is important. These are also the moments that have stuck with me for days after the screening ended. Bowen Yang and Han Gi-chan star as Chris and Min, a long-term gay couple struggling to decide if marriage is the next step; Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran also star as Lee and Angela, a deeply in love lesbian couple trying to having a baby through IVF. Joan Chen also appears as Angela’s overbearing mother May Chen, and Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung also has a wonderful role as Min’s grandmother Ja-Young, who is the catalyst for most of what happens in the film. I was not expecting to be this astonished and moved and charmed by this cast and everything that happens with them. I thought it would just be a fun comedy about a wild & crazy wedding banquet, but it’s so much more than that. It’s an intricate, carefully crafted, wholesome, beautifully intimate, adorable story filled with love & chaos & family.
The cast in this has such a beautiful dynamic – their interconnected relationships and how they’re handled in this story are sensational. You’ll fall in love with them, it’s hard not to after watching. The comedy is fresh and fun and funky, exploring LGBTQ themes as well as family drama and Pacific Northwest quirks aplenty. It’s simply magnificent ensemble storytelling. This is another powerful crowd-pleaser comedy, an emotional masterpiece. The way Ahn is able to dance between humor and heartbreak, love and laughter, is remarkable. It’s the mark of a filmmaker getting more and more confident with every film he makes – especially when he finds the perfect cast. The Korean granny performance by Youn Yuh-jung is just the best. There is a reason she already has an Oscar and I would not even think twice nominating her again for this role. I loved almost everything about this film (only a few tiny nitpicks) and emerged from this screening immediately sending messages to my family & friends telling them this is a must see favorite from Sundance 2025. Even though it is another a remake, even though it is an update on already beloved classic, it stands on its own as a terrific contemporary queer comedy. I can’t wait for it to hit theaters to watch it again and bring everyone I know.
Alex’s Sundance 2025 Rating: 9 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
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