The Wedding Banquet

There was a lot of buzz for The Wedding Banquet at Sundance this year and I had the opportunity to see it but, because it already had a release date (I saw a trailer for it at the Broadway before Sundance even started), I decided to see something else (the film I saw instead was Rebuilding with Josh O'Connor and I ended up loving it so it was a good decision).  It is now playing at the Broadway so I saw it last night with my nephew and I have to admit that I was a little disappointed because it is very different from what I was expecting.  Lee (Lily Gladstone) and Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) are a lesbian couple hoping to have a child through IVF but two attempts have failed and they are not sure if they can afford a third.  Chris (Bowen Yang), Angela's aimless best friend from college, lives in their garage with his boyfriend Min (Han Gi-chan), the scion of a wealthy family in Korea who is about to lose his student visa.  Min proposes to Chris but he refuses because he knows that Min's family will disown him and cut him off financially if they find out he is gay.  Min is disappointed but then decides to ask Angela to marry him instead and, in return for helping him get a green card, he will pay for the next round of IVF.  Angela agrees but complications ensue when she tells her mother May (Joan Chen), who has made supporting LGBTQ+ causes her whole personality after initially rejecting Angela, and when Min's grandmother Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung) decides to come for the wedding.  This is a remake of the 1993 movie of the same name by Ang Lee and, since I have not seen the original, my expectations were based on the trailer alone and it led me to expect a comedy which I did not get.  While there are a few funny moments (which all appear in the trailer), this is more dramatic with themes of acceptance and reconciliation as flawed people learn the importance of found family.  All of the characters have interesting arcs but the resolutions for some of them feel very rushed, especially Angela's fear about being a mother and Lee's anger about an infidelity.  However, I loved how Ja-Young gradually comes to understand her grandson and Youn Yuh-jung gives a lovely performance (that brought a tear to my eye).  Chen steals every scene she is in and Tran impressed me with the depth of her emotional performance but Gladstone is underused and Yang doesn't really sell the dramatic moments (he is a much better comedic actor).  I didn't hate this but I definitely didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

Note:  I really hate when the marketing for a movie is misleading.