The Wedding Banquet

Predictability reigns, but the lively characters end up being generous-hearted, offering the audience joyous proof that gay or straight, male or female... sometimes a chosen family trumps the biological one in navigating the pitfalls of modern love.

Between Fire Island and The Wedding Banquet, writer/director Andrew Ahn has found his particular rom-com frequency—ensemble comedies that seemed poised to explode into screwball madness but instead unfold as gently as a whisper.

As appealing as the actors playing the two couples are, the heart of the film is in the two women in the older generations.

There’s an easy intimacy and warmth that immediately emanates from Andrew Ahn’s “The Wedding Banquet”… He crafts a cinematic world that you want to slip into and spend some time&#59; tactile, cozy, populated with witty, real characters.

A reimagining of the original's premise that feels fresh in an age of relaxed queer sexuality, gay marriage and understanding relatives while honoring the underlying family dynamics that made it work the first time.

It’s never very persuasive, and surprisingly lachrymose for a film being sold as a rom-com. That’s not to say that a comedy like this should shy away from weightier emotions. Here, though, they are dully meted out for some 100 minutes.

In a cinematic landscape where queer stories are increasingly rare, The Wedding Banquet has its heart in the right place.

Bells are ringing with queer love and romance in Andrew Ahn's funny, if formulaic, re-do of 'The Wedding Banquet.'

It’s the sweet affection and renewed declarations of love, no matter the acronyms involved, that will endear its complementary place next to Ang Lee’s original.

The film smartly updates Ang Lee’s landmark film with more progressive attitudes towards the LBGTQ community, nicely drawn characters and standout performances from Joan Chen and Youn Yuh-jun.