Review of The Wedding Banquet

There is this thing they do in movie trailers that I like to call the Robin Williams effect (my partner just calls it false advertising), where they pull every funny moment out of a drama and then say, look, it’s a screwball comedy, when it actually has a lot of deeply emotional moments.   This was the case with The Wedding Banquet.  Every advertisement I saw was gay hijinks around a pair of  lgbtq+ couples getting together so that one of them doesn’t have to be cut off by their family and move back to Korea.   Let me get one straight, I am in no way taking anything away from the movie; it is great. I think it was just one of those times when the marketing department decided that, after Crazy Rich Asians, this approach would work better. 
The movie centers on two couples.  Angela and Lee are trying to get pregnant via in vitro fertilization who have run out of money and options.  The other Lee and Min are facing Min’s expiring visa, a family threatening to cut him off financially if he doesn’t return to Korea and take a corporate job.  The group decides that the best option is for Angela to marry Min.  They arrange a quick marriage at the justice of the peace, but all their plans are thrown into disarray when Min’s Grandmother shows up and demands a traditional Korean wedding.  There are some humorous moments, but most of the film focuses on the two couples as they examine their relationships and their lack of communication.   The film had many deeply emotional scenes that touched me, and it surprised me in ways that almost no character turned out to be who I thought they would be.   If you enjoy movies filled with love, depth, and found family, you could not do better.