Pop Culture Happy Hour - The Wedding Banquet

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

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 harsh words fly. Directed by Andrew Ahn (Fire Island), the film offers a modern take on Ang Lee's classic queer film.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

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 Ayesha Harris, and today we're talking about the wedding banquet on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is NPR producer Mallory U. 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 to 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, Trevelle Anderson. Hello, Trevelle. Welcome. Hey. 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 Gichun, Ghi Chun's student visa is about to expire, and his rich grandmother insists he returned home to Korea to, of course, run a business empire. She's played by the great Yun Yajung, who won an Oscar a few years ago for Minery. 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.

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 class.

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 leads in this remake has chemistry with every other lead. 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 on the

director. And he mentioned he started conceptualizing this movie thinking about, you know, what would it be like if the woman was also queer? And what new things can 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. We are 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,

and make changes that are both interesting and necessary, and especially given the fact that this isn't just a queer comedy, 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 is 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, Anli, 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 On's Refresh isn't just interesting, which, again, is one of the filters, if you will, I have for remakes. It's catavating. I mean, 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 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 Onest done a more than worthy remake. Yeah. And the original film follows a gay Taiwanese American immigrant who 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 Trevelle, what did you think of the 2025 version of the wedding banquet? Well, 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 On's work. I think he does a great job often at, you know, zeroing in on these like quiltidian and like private moments that you just don't often see certain kinds of characters being able to relish on screen. I mean, that is also very much present in this film as well. But I did not laugh.

I chuckled here and there. Yeah. 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?

Not quite sure. Interesting. Yeah. It's funny because I think I kind of land somewhere in between you, Trevelle 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 I was expecting maybe. I think I was expecting something a little bit faster-paced and a little bit more screwbally. 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. The straightening up scene. They're straightening up scene. Yeah, 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 pace 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 their 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'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. 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 one, 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 Waytung's father looking out into the garden that are kind of mimicked 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 bank. quit, it's updating it and adding a new touch and 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 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 know. And I did know and I did connect with it. So we haven't even mentioned the great Joan Chen

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. first scene, May is winning an award for being an LGBTQ ally. But as we learn, May was not exactly the best mother to her queer child when she was growing up. And that creates a completely new sort of conundrum that, you know, I imagine people, of course, have 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 D.D. most recently. And then here she gets to be a completely different kind of mom. 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 shifts in that relationship. And even though, you know, years down the line, you might have returned back to that previous sort of familial, you know, your mom loves you kind of vibe, there's always that like, but you reacted this way to when I came out. And like as someone who

had that experience or had a similar experience with my mom, I found it really touching that her like immigrant, or what I assumed at first was an immigrant reaction to her like loud, overbearing mother 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 period. 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 Andrews'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 like 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 love 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 by being too supportive. But then, like, on top of it, she's winning awards. It's like, now you're being recognized for us. Yeah. 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 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 on, 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's a little crunchy. It was a little crunchy. 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. Isha, 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. And so I applaud him for that. But there were moments where it showed. I was blown away by Hungi Chun, who is playing Min. And 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 out there 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, green card. I don't even want to be an American. Your trains are so slow and never know how much to tip. I have to say, my own dick was a little bit 180 degrees different in some way. That's right. 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 Junya Jong, 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 Boen Yang 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. 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 his interaction with like 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 effective. there, Jeff. We, look, I love a conversation where we're kind of all over the place. It makes me more fun and a little messy. And we know Mallory loves mess. I do love mess.

Well, I think it's like 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 PCH.

and on Letterbox at letterbox.com slash NPR Pop Culture, we'll have a link to that in our episode description. And that brings us to the end of our show, Jeff Yang, Mallory You, Trayvall Anderson. Thanks so much for being here. This was fun. This was fun. Thank you. Thank you, Ayesha. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and edited by Mike Katzif.

Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy. Audio Engineering was performed by Simon Laslow Jansen. And Hello, Kamin, 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.