Wedding Banquet, The

A comedy-melodrama that takes old-fashioned screwball comedy elements and mixes them with '90s sensibilities and a homosexual twist, "The Wedding Banquet" is a low-budget, independent film that could be described as "La Cage aux Folles" meets "Green Card."

Wai Tung (Winston Chao) is an immigrant living in Manhattan with his gay lover Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein), and he would be perfectly content if it weren't for his parents back home in Taiwan constantly trying to fix him up with prospective wives. They don't know their son is gay, and they want him to settle down and give them grandchildren.

Tung lives with Simon but also owns a slum apartment building, in which he has invested all his money. When he goes there to collect back rent from one of the tenants, an artist named Wei Wei (May Chin) who is in danger of deportation, she tries to pay him with one of her paintings.

Eventually, the pressure from Tung's parents reaches a zenith and Simon concocts a plan to fake a marriage. Tung can marry Wei Wei, she can get her green card and Tung can get his parents off his back. It seems like a simple solution until Tung's parents arrive for the wedding, at which point the deception becomes extremely complicated.

Though mainstream audiences may be a bit shocked by the casual portrayal of the relationship between Tung and Simon (there is no sex, though they kiss, embrace and verbally express their love for each other), the film is really little more than an out-of-the-mainstream take on conventional screwball comedy.

And when it's played for laughs, "The Wedding Banquet" is very funny — especially during the title event.

Co-writer/producer/director Ang Lee understands the complexities of comic timing and understated humor. Not content with that, however, he also laces the proceedings with far too many melodramatic, thickly layered sentimental moments that tend to drag. The result is an uneven mixed bag.

"The Wedding Banquet" is unrated but would doubtless receive an R for profanity, vulgar language, a sex scene (between Tung and Wei Wei) and some brief female nudity.