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The lovely rom-com The Wedding Banquet has a stellar all-star cast, including Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, and Bowen Yang. It's a twisty comedy of errors where proposals, hookups, and occasionally some harsh words fly. And it reflects modern sensibilities around relationships and friendship, while also showing how some ideals and traditions die hard. I'm Aisha Harris, and today we're talking about The Wedding Banquet on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
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Joining us today is NPR producer Mallory Yu. Hello, Mallory. Great to have you back. Hey, Aisha. Always great to be here. Also with us is Jeff Yang. He's a cultural critic and author of The Golden Screen, the movies that made Asian America. Welcome back to you too, Jeff. Happy to be here. Yes, yes. And rounding out our panel is journalist and author of We See Each Other, a Black trans journey through TV and film, Travelle Anderson. Hello, Travelle. Welcome. Hi.
Yes. I'm excited for this conversation. It's going to be quite fun. So Kelly Marie Tran and Lily Gladstone play a couple who are trying to have a baby but are facing disappointing hurdles with IVF.
They're friends with another couple, played by Bowen Yang and Hun Gi-chun. Gi-chun's student visa is about to expire, and his rich grandmother insists he return home to Korea to, of course, run a business empire. She's played by the great Yoon Yeo-jung, who won an Oscar a few years ago for Meenery. Bowen is afraid of commitment and won't accept his boyfriend's proposal so he can stay in the country. So you do want to marry me? No! No!
This is all very hard on my ego. So instead, he makes an arrangement to marry Kelly Marie trans character Angela. That way, he'll get a green card, and in exchange, he'll give the couple the money they need to continue with IVF. Of course, it doesn't go down as simple as that, because this is a rom-com and a comedy of errors. This is a remake of the 1993 Ang Lee movie of the same name, which has become a beloved queer classic, and The Wedding Banquet is in theaters now.
So Mallory, I'm going to start with you. What do you think of this modern remake, this fresh look at this very beloved classic? I really liked this movie. I had so much fun watching it. It made me laugh. It made me cry. I think one of the most important aspects of a romantic comedy is the chemistry between the leads. And I feel like every single one of the leads in this remake has chemistry with every other lead. Yeah.
I generally have a hesitation towards remakes just because I feel like lately there needs to be a higher bar for how and what we remake. And I think that personally, this remake worked well for me because...
It started from a place of newness. The screening that I went to had a Q&A with Andrew Ahn, the director, and he mentioned he started conceptualizing this movie as
thinking about, you know, what would it be like if the woman was also queer? And what new things could he say about the queer community or queer friendship that maybe the 1993 original wasn't really able to hold? And I felt like I really saw that. I felt a lot of
queer joy and also queer mess. And I love mess. So I'm always here for that. Yes, yes. I think that's such a great point about remakes, because as you know, I also hammer about them a lot. But if there's any sort of movie, concerning how much has changed over the last 30 plus years since the original came out, that seems worth revisiting. This seems like it. There's a lot that has happened.
Jeff, I'm so curious to hear your thoughts about this. Tell us more. Well, I'm going to start exactly where you left off there, which is going to go on the record as saying that I'm a fan of remakes. Spicy take. Specific kinds of remakes. Let me be clear. As long as the remakes slide hard, right, and make changes that are both interesting and necessary, and especially given the fact that this isn't just a queer thing.
it's also an Asian American indie classic. I feel like we're kind of finally at a place where we built up enough of the canon that there's the opportunity for us to go back and re-examine some of these early works and bring to them things that are in fact necessary. And if there is a work that needed a remake, the original Wedding Banquet, one of my favorite movies, only one of my favorite directors, but so many of its tropes did feel like they were
outdated and problematic, right? In the light of 2025. And I will say this, I feel like Andrew Allen's refresh isn't just interesting, which again is one of the filters, if you will, I have for remakes. It's totally, it's captivating. I mean, it doesn't replace the original film. It's its own movie. It has an entirely different genre setting, right?
I feel like, you know, the 1993 movie was a comedy of manners, a real kind of a farce of mistaken sexual identities. But this is like a very much more a straightforward romantic comedy drama, much more texture, much more realistic. And it's about the people and not just the situation they're in. So with that, I think it's absolutely worthy of remaking. And Andrew Ahn has done a more than worthy remake. Yeah. And the original film follows a gay Taiwanese American immigrant who, you
marries his tenant, who is a mainland Chinese immigrant. And he's looking to appease his old school parents. She'll get a green card. So it's a bit of a different kind of movie. But Travelle, what did you think of the 2025 version of The Wedding Banquet? You know, Jeff, you said it was interesting. And I would also describe it as interesting. I don't know. So I enjoyed it.
I'm glad it's here. I'm glad it exists. I love Andrew Onn's work. I think he does a great job often at, you know, zeroing in on these like quotidian and like private moments that you just don't often see certain kinds of characters being able to relish in on screen. And that is also very much present in this film as well. But I did not laugh.
I chuckled here and there. And then once we got to the, you know, big emotional, you know, climax near the end of the movie, something didn't quite connect for me to where I was like, oh, this is a cute movie. Yeah. Fine movie. Glad it exists. Will I watch it again? No.
Not quite sure. Interesting. Yeah. It's funny because I think I kind of land somewhere in between you, Travelle, and then Jeff and Mallory where there were so many moments I love. And, you know, this is a comedy, but I will say it wasn't the type of comedy that...
that I was expecting, maybe. I think I was expecting something a little bit faster paced and a little bit more screwball-y. And we don't really get that. There's some very lovely touches. I love the moment that mimics the original version where the grandmother is coming. She's like, I'm coming out and I'm going to see you and meet you. The straightening up scene. They're straightening up the house. Yeah, straightening up.
Yes. So they're straightening up the house that they share to make it look as though they are not gay and that they are not. And so like they're taking out like Elliot Page's memoir and a copy of a portrait of a lady on fire. I'm like Lilith Fair poster. It's like
I love those little touches, those little updates of that original scene. Those made me chuckle. They were fun. But it's just, to me, it felt like a throwback. And I think your mileage may vary. I liked this throwback feel, but it felt paced kind of like a 90s movie. Like, it doesn't have the quite same sort of, like,
acceleration that I think we are often now like so many movies, especially if they're rom-coms, just they have to, they know that a lot of people's attention spans, they expect things to happen right away. And this takes its time. I can kind of see both sides of this where it
It's not hilarious. It's not, you know, laugh out loud. But I also did a pre... And maybe it doesn't need to be laugh out loud. Exactly. Sure. You know what I mean? You know, in terms of my expectations of what I was coming into, maybe that's a little bit of what I'm brushing up against. Yeah. That's part of my point, though, about the genre switch, right? This is a romantic dramedy, really. And...
I think the fact that if you did love the 1993 original, you are expecting that screwball kind of like zaniness, which this movie doesn't have. It's very naturalistic. It's much more sort of situated in something that feels like a real world. Yeah, I mean, I will say, though, that the original does have so many quiet moments between characters like Wei Tung's father looking out into the garden that are kind of mimicked in
in, you know, this refresh. I really like using that word refresh, Jeff, because I feel like remake is not quite right. In this case, yeah, definitely refresh. That's great. Yeah, because it's not trying to replace anything. It's not trying to fix the old wedding banquet. It's updating it and adding a new touch, a new spin. There were a lot of quiet moments, a lot more, a lot of human moments too. And I felt like I really saw that come through in
in this refresh in a way that I really appreciated. There's this ridiculous story and premise, but there are humans at the center of it and at the heart of it. And I think what I really liked the most kind of comparing the two is the way in which both directors leave a lot unsaid between all the characters. What I really appreciated about this refresh is that there was a lot of, if you know, you
you know, and I, I did know, and I did connect with it. So we haven't even mentioned the great Joan Chen. No. Who plays May, Kelly Marie Tran, Angela's mother, with whom she has a very fraught relationship. It's not a spoiler to say, because this comes up in the first scene. May is winning an award for being an LGBTQ ally. Um,
But as we learn, May was not exactly the best mother to her queer child when she was growing up. And that creates like a completely new sort of conundrum that, you know, I imagine people, of course, had those issues in the 90s. But we are able to address it in a different way or even address it at all now. And I'm curious how that landed for you, because I also just feel as though I haven't really seen.
In any recent movies, and maybe I'm missing them, but I haven't really seen that sort of play on the parents, parent-child relationship in this way before. What did we make of this? I mean, Joan Chen is just always going to shine in anything she does, right? It's like, I loved her in Dee Dee most recently. And then here she gets to be a completely different kind of mom now.
And I really liked that touch and the nuance of her character specifically because it's really complicated when you have a really good relationship with your parent or had one and then you come out and something changes or something shifts in that relationship and
And even though, you know, years down the line, you might have returned back to that previous sort of familial relationship.
Yeah.
was more nuanced and complex and actually reflected the way that a lot of people might feel and not know how to address with their now supportive pain. I do think that there is a particular authenticity, a particular realness, right, that comes through the entire movie. I think that's one of Andrew's specialties, right? Particularly when dealing with...
narratives that people could believe are hyper-specific to a particular community, right? I also love the idea of just seeing this exploration of queer family, queer family relationships, alternative living structures, and how folks are able to, queer folks especially, to show up for each other,
Right? In really interesting ways that I think are quite reflective of how, you know, communities move through various circumstances and situations. That was a real family. Like, that felt accurate to an experience of sorts. And I loved the character twist on the mother because, you know...
Sometimes the parents, after they go through their transformation, they go in the opposite, complete opposite direction and start getting on your nerves. So I felt that deeply. Yes, yes. And that's the thing, right? It's not just that she like does a 180 and she's like being annoying biopsy.
by being too supportive. But then, like, on top of it, she's winning awards. It's like... It's like now you're being recognized for this? Like, just the sheer sort of, like, both angst and anxiety and just hurt that Angela feels. I think Kelly Marie Tran does such a good job of embodying that dynamic. And I really think, like, all of these performances are just very, very fascinating. I do...
I want to talk a little bit about Bowen Yang and his dramatic chops. This movie asks a lot of him. I love him. I think he's hilarious on SNL. And I thought in Fire Island, his previous film that he also made with Andrew Ahn, he was able to tap into his dramatic role in an interesting way. But here, I'm not sure. There are some scenes, right? I wasn't quite connected. It was a little crunchy for me when he wasn't being like very funny, which is.
That's his back. Am I alone on this island? No, you are not alone. You are not alone, Aisha. There were a couple moments where, like I said before, that it didn't quite connect with me. And I do feel like it was around his performance more so than the others. That being said, I love the idea of him stretching in ways that I did not expect before.
And so I applaud him for that. But there were moments where it showed. I was blown away by Hong Gi-chan, who is playing Min. He's just very, very charming. And there's a way where he could have been, you know, the flighty...
younger person who is just like completely, and in a way he is. He's like, he's rich, he's spoiled, and also like he doesn't quite have the worldview. Like he's not broken in the same way these other characters are after living for 30 years. But he brought a warmth for me that I think really worked. And when I did chuckle, when I was laughing, it was almost always him. And I just really appreciated that. I'm not going to marry you so you can get a green card. Oh, f***.
- Green card! I don't even want to be an American! Your trains are so slow and I never know how much to tip! - I have to say, my own take was a little bit 180 degrees different in some ways. - That's fine! - I think actually he's incredibly charming. I have no disagreement there. And I thought his comic chops were great. His timing was great for all those lines.
I thought the place where he was less convincing was in the moments that were supposed to be dramatic. And since a lot of those were paired with Yoon Yeo-jung, it's tough because she is so nuanced. She's so able to make scenes very complex, even with just a look. And frankly, I know that Bo Nyang is, he's not naturally a dramatic actor, but I actually went in thinking that I was going to also not be as convinced about his dramatic chops because
But there is something which happens later on that I think explains a little bit more about why his character acts the way he does. He has this interaction with a young cousin that he has kind of cared for and really explains a lot of the reasons why he's so commitment phobic and so passive aggressive in a way that I think brings more light to his dramatic performance. So I wanted to stand for
my brother Yang there and say, yeah, I think he actually is doing more than maybe appears on screen. That is totally fair, Jeff. We, we look, I love a conversation where we're, we're kind of all over the place. It's, it makes it more fun and a little messy as, and we know Mallory loves mess and. I do love mess.
Well, I think it's safe to say that we all enjoyed this movie. Glad it exists. Glad it's here. It's a good refresh. For sure. I'm going to be using that now. We want to know what you think about The Wedding Banquet. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash pchh and on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com slash nprpopculture. We'll have a link to that in our episode description.
And that brings us to the end of our show. Jeff Yang, Mallory Yu, Trayvon Anderson, thanks so much for being here. This was fun. Thank you. So fun. Thank you. Thank you, Ayesha. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and edited by Mike Katziff. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy. Audio engineering was performed by Simon Laszlo Jansen. And Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Ayesha Harris, and we'll see you all next time.
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On this week's Wildcard podcast, Brett Goldstein says even though his shows Ted Lasso and Shrinking get emotional, he doesn't. I haven't cried in years. I guess I thought you might be like a closet crier. No. I mean, I write all this stuff because then I don't have to live it. Whoa. She's like, I got him. I'm Rachel Martin. Brett Goldstein is on Wildcard, the show where cards control the conversation.