By Jason Osiason

A low-key delight about love, lies, queerness, and tradition colliding under one roof. The Wedding Banquet carries itself with an ease that feels so rare in the rom-com genre: grounded, lived-in, and deeply felt. What could have been just another lighthearted comedy about a fake marriage quickly becomes something more, blending humor and heartbreak in a way that sneaks up on you.

Min never intended for this to spiral. His relationship with Chris is complicated enough, comfortable but stalled, full of love but lacking commitment. When his best friend Angela needs a green-card marriage, it seems like an easy enough solution. A harmless fix. Sign the papers, keep the parents happy, move on. But nothing in life or family is ever that simple. His well-meaning but wildly traditional grandmother insists on throwing a full-scale Korean wedding banquet, and suddenly, what was supposed to be a quiet arrangement turns into an elaborate deception.

That’s where the film finds its magic. The comedy is sharp, the misunderstandings pile up, and the fake-marriage hijinks are every bit as fun as you’d hope. But underneath the chaos, there’s something more delicate happening like a slow unraveling of Min’s carefully built life, the weight of cultural expectations pressing in, the quiet heartbreak of hiding who you are from the people you love most. The film never makes Min’s dilemma feel like a simple choice. It’s messy, complicated, and painfully real.

Youn Yuh-jung is magnificent, delivering a performance so rich and layered that it catches you off guard. She’s the heartbeat of the film, embodying both the warmth and the pressure of family tradition. One moment, she’s effortlessly funny; the next, she’s breaking your heart with a single glance. She walks the impossible line between strict and loving, between upholding the past and unknowingly keeping her grandson locked inside it.

The chemistry between the entire ensemble is what makes The Wedding Banquet shine. Min’s forced intimacy with Angela is hilarious, full of moments where they’re just barely keeping the illusion together. Meanwhile, his quiet but strained dynamic with Chris carries an entirely different kind of weight, full of things unsaid. There’s a balance to the performances that allows the film to drift seamlessly between its lighthearted charm and the deeper emotional undercurrents simmering just beneath the surface.

I wasn’t expecting it to hit as hard as it did. What starts as a comedy of errors ends up being a story about identity, belonging, and the complicated beauty of acceptance. It’s a film about family in the truest sense—not just the one we’re born into, but the one we fight to build. [B+]