The Wedding Banquet (2025)

Saccharine and hilarious, this is a refreshing, if less focused, update to the 1993 original film. It gracefully acknowledges how the cultural acceptance of gay people has (unevenly depending on where you are) evolved over the years, but it doesn’t mean being gay has become easy. Yes, we have much much better problems today than we did in 1993, but you can still find yourself in conundrums where marrying a straight person in a sham wedding feels like the only solution. 

My favorite scene was the conversation between Min and his grandmother during the wedding photoshoot. This is where I must say how phenomenal of an actor Youn Yuh-jung is. After meeting Angela’s mother, who literally made a lifestyle out of having a lesbian daughter, Min’s grandma only asks him three questions: “Do Chris’s parents know he’s gay? Are they pleased? Have you met them?” You see the realization in her that all of Min’s friends have supportive parents and that her grandson is the only one who didn’t feel safe being himself with his family. The guilt and heartache and care and love she had for him was so palpable in everything she left unsaid. 

Please go see this movie in theaters! Sometimes living in the Bay area makes you forget this but we really don’t get representation like this often. It’s made by a great queer asian director who’ll only get to make more movies like this if they can make money!