In Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993) a surly gay New Yorker is pushed into a sham marriage by his Taiwanese parents. The first hour is a comedy about hypocrisy. Things take a dark turn in the third act. Roger Ebert praised the movie’s “warm heart.” I found the treatment of the gay characters depressing.
Andrew Ahn’s 2025 film is less remake than re-imagining. It mixes ideas from Lee’s story into a new tale of found families. Min (Han Gi-Chan) wants marriage. His self-loathing boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang) does not. Lee (Lily Gladstone) wants a baby. Her depressed girlfriend Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) does not. Then Min proposes to Angela to secure his green card. Things get complicated.
The film has been mislabeled as a romcom. The mopey characters and slow pace belong to a dramedy. The arrival of Angela’s mother (Joan Chen) and Min’s grandmother (Youn Yuh-jung) suggests farcical complications. Instead, they prompt tear-stained monologues from their angsty kids. I wanted these gloomy, mismatched bores to break up and set each other free. That’s clearly not the reaction Ahn was hoping for.
The film also invokes a cliché that I hate. The idea that not wanting a baby is a character flaw. Something a person can overcome with enough introspection and social pressure. That was tired in 1993. It’s gross in 2025.
This month also saw the wide release of Roshan Sethi’s A Nice Indian Boy. A timid Indian doctor (Karan Soni) hides his extroverted white boyfriend (Jonathan Groff) from his uptight family. The film does a better job balancing the drama with the romcom tropes. The characters have nuance and bite. The screenplay provides conflict without making anyone irredeemable. (Though hair and makeup seem to hate Jonathan Groff. They work overtime to make the dreamboat look frumpy.)
Fans of queer Asian stories may enjoy comparing and contrasting these works. But if you only see one, I recommend A Nice Indian Boy.
You can find more of my reviews on The Avocado, Letterboxd and Serializd. My podcast, Rainbow Colored Glasses, can be found here.