The Wedding Banquet

I was very much looking forward to this movie and I was not disappointed I was ready to give it seven stars after only watching the first 40 minutes and in my opinion the trailer , as is often the case, would not give one a fair idea of what the true nature of it is. Sure there's plenty of comedy, but it is really a character study of the difficulties encountered in human relationships and it does that with genuine portrayals of those relationships , couples and parent / offspring, the out in the open and the repressed. The acting and story is gripping and I think you will find yourself totally immersed in them and as unlikely as some of the events may seem, the film never struggles in getting them across, comedy , yes but it deals much more with emotions and there are so many satisfying scenes where that is the primary subject.

Seven point nine stars, script acting throughout, not one person outshines the other and equal weight is given to all of them IE well written, I loved it.

Remember the "Proposal" (2009)? Well this is a sort of derivative of that only here it is two gay couples who decide that a bit of judicious legerdemain might enable one to get a green card and another to fund some fertility treatment. You see, commitment-phobe "Chris" (Bowen Wang) has been with his wealthy Korean boyfriend "Min" (Han Gi-Chan) for years but won't marry him. This irks his partner who also has pressures from his family at home who want to bring him home to work in the family business and marry a nice girl. Meantime, best pal "Lee" (Lily Gladstone) and girlfriend "Angela" (Kelly Marie Tran) are trying to conceive via IVF but are having no luck. It would appear that the solution to both of their problems might lie in a marriage of convenience. Far-fetched? Well the best bit is yet to come as grandma (Youn Yuh-jung) arrives from Seoul determined to find out just what is going on and to protect her grandson from what she clearly suspects is some money-grabbers. It takes her about two minutes to suss things out so now the couples have to pray that she will go along with their scheme, else everything will come crashing down. There are a few funny scenes here, but for the most part if you watch any amount of American gay cinema then you will have seen this all before. Wang offers us very little new here and the plot lurches just a bit too close to the preposterous for me as the underlying pretence of the theme goes from silly to sillier and the characterisations slip effortlessly into multifarious, sometimes quite cringeworthy, stereotypes. I do hope it takes a few quid at the box office, though, because Han Gi-chan could sure use a decent meal!

'The Wedding Banquet' is not a masterpiece, but I enjoyed and loved it. Frankly, LGBT romance does not move me as much as heterosexual romance of the same quality because when I try to put myself in the main character's shoes, the latter is way much easier. However, 'The Wedding Banquet' does a great job of making me fall in love with the characters. Four main characters are introduced properly in the beginning. They have distinctive personalities, and the dynamics of the group is interesting. Even I want to be included in this group.

I especially liked not only Yoon's character but her acting as well. Grandmother gives this feel-good movie meaning and sense. She provides how boomers look at modern day relationships and a traditional, institutional ceremony called marriage. She is confused but tries hard to understand and love her grandson as he is. Yoon's acting is so genuine, delicate, and elegant all at the same time. Brilliant performance.

They took a really wonderful movie (the 1993 original), and remade it as another lazy, run of the mill romantic comedy that's trying desperately to be modern and relevant.

Bowen Yang's acting performance was distractingly bad. However, Joan Chen and Lily Gladstone's acting performances were good and solid. But they couldn't save the film.

Overall, I think this one is worth skipping and will probably be forgotten about in 5 years.

I'm glad that this movie will at least bring more attention to the original, and maybe expose people to Ang Lee's earlier work which I personally think is his best.

Very surprised by all the positive reviews (both critics and movie-goers) of The Wedding Banquet.

My partner and I were very much looking forward to it - but were seriously disappointed.

Various reviewers described the film as hilarious, charming, heartwarming.

We did not see that movie.

It was like spending time - too much time - with neighbors who mostly converse in therapy-speak platitudes, irony-speak chatter and in the case of one of the characters, complain incessantly about their mother.

In addition to the annoying therapy-speak dialogue, the characters were not so interesting in our opinion. Angela's character (Kelly Marie Tran) was especially churlish and unappealing - it was impossible to see why Lee (Lily Gladstone) would have been in a relationship with Angela. For different reasons, it was difficult to see why Chris and Min were together.

The few interesting and thoughtful parts of the movie, in our opinion, were the scenes of Min and his grandmother.

I recall admiring the original Wedding Banquet - will watch it again to see.