It’s the warmth of Gladstone’s presence that leaves a lasting impression and endows this remake -- with all its reshufflings, inspired or strained -- with a whisper of something authentically new.

| Apr 25, 2025

Andrew Ahn is a humane filmmaker -- this is his fourth feature, and I think they all really work, capturing not only geographic specificity but also giving you characters who are deep and moving.

| Apr 22, 2025

It’s a fun, open-hearted picture, and even if it lacks the wistful subtlety of the original, it ends up on the same landing note.

| Apr 21, 2025

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.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 18, 2025

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.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 18, 2025

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

| Original Score: B | Apr 18, 2025

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; tactile, cozy, populated with witty, real characters.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 18, 2025

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.

| Apr 17, 2025

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.

| Apr 17, 2025

“The Wedding Banquet” serves up comfort food for queer audiences during a time when they’re hungering for something upbeat to devour.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 17, 2025

The cast is strong enough to sell us on the movie’s idea of love, even when it bends conventionality into a balloon animal. But its conception of mega-wealth is truly phony.

| Apr 17, 2025

The Wedding Banquet may not take its modern queer skepticism as far as its characters could naturally go... but it is an enjoyable, worthwhile 100 minutes spent laughing, groaning, and hoping.

| Original Score: B | Apr 17, 2025

“The Wedding Banquet” is so charming, and then so unexpectedly moving, that its strengths eventually outweigh the bits of mess.

| Apr 17, 2025

“The Wedding Banquet” is a worthy successor to Ang Lee’s classic, and a chance for a group of actors to shine together and separately.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 17, 2025

So whenever “The Wedding Banquet” threatens to trip over the shoelaces of its plotting or its occasionally overearnest dialogue, the warmth of the characterizations saves it from falling.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 17, 2025

In a film that pays sweet tribute to chosen families, these three actors [Yuh-Jung, Chen & Gladstone] elevate their less-tested colleagues.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 17, 2025

What Ahn manages to do is create relatable characters with layers to them and introduce them in a way that makes you feel as if you already know them.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 17, 2025

Ahn’s interpretation is charming. Gladstone and Tran walk away with the film. In a landscape of BIG event movies, it’s nice to slow down and just enjoy people with a movie like this.

| Original Score: B- | Apr 17, 2025

A modern-day tale with an old-fashioned spirit, a joyous crowd-pleaser with the most romantic of hearts.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 17, 2025

You can also excuse a lot in a film that was clearly made with its heart in the right place and a deep love for all its characters, even in their messiest, most unsympathetic moments.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 16, 2025