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Sundance movie review: 'Wedding Banquet' a funny, emotional update

From left, Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, Han Gi-chan and Bowen Yang star in "The Wedding Banquet," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute
1 of 6 | From left, Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, Han Gi-chan and Bowen Yang star in "The Wedding Banquet," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute

PARK CITY, UTAH Jan. 30 (UPI) -- The Wedding Banquet, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival, is a funny and sweet update of the Ang Lee original. Lee's co-writer James Schamus wrote the new script with director Andrew Ahn.

Kelly Marie Tran and Lily Gladstone play Angela and and Lee, a couple struggling to conceive via in vitro fertilization. Meanwhile, Angela's college friend Chris (Bowen Yang) is in a relationship with Min (Han Gi-chan).

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With Min's student visa about to expire, and Chris having rejected his marriage proposal, Min suggests he marry Angela to secure his green card and offers to pay for Lee's next IVF treatment.

The situation captures the sort of comic hijinks of many '80s comedies. The friends have to pull off a fake wedding so Min can stay in the United States and Angela and Lee can afford more IVF.

It's a little more human than, say, the teen brothel in Risky Business or the plot against the jocks in Revenge of the Nerds. Green cards and fertility treatments are real-world challenges.

It is also refreshing that the quartet can't actually fool anybody. There is a funny scene where they try to convince Min's grandmother (Youn Yuh-jung) that Min and Angela are a couple but she sees right through it.

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Still, she agrees to support Min and Angela as long as they have a full wedding ceremony for the extended family. The story of modern couples going through with traditional weddings to please traditional family members is also universal.

The humor of the film is mostly in the four friends who riff with each other like real friends do. There are some amusing comedic scenes where Americanized Angela and Min try to accommodate Asian traditions.

The drama of The Wedding Banquet is both poignant and heartwarming. Failed fertility treatments are traumatic and make both Lee and Angela question motherhood.

The wedding actually allows Min to come out to his grandmother, even though she agrees to keep it from the rest of the family.

Moreover, Chris's commitment phobia is not limited to his relationship. He also never finished his dissertation and procrastinates to avoid potential failure.

This is a wedding movie and follows many of the tropes of American wedding movies. What's fun is those tropes get both Asian and LGBTQ twists.

The Wedding Banquet proves as relevant now as it was in 1993. Perhaps it can be reimagined for every generation like Father of the Bride.

Bleecker Street will release The Wedding Banquet on April 18.

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Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.

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