It says something about how we’ve evolved as a culture that one of the most charmingly conventional movies of 2025 is the Asian American same-sex marriage four-way “The Wedding Banquet.” A remake of Ang Lee’s 1993 film of the same title — the “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” director’s breakthrough — the new film is unnecessary as such, but it’s a determinedly openhearted crowd-pleaser with a handful of delicious performances, and it’s just about impossible to dislike.

Relocating from the original movie’s Manhattan to a cloudy, verdant Seattle, this fresh “Banquet” retains the exploration (and occasional agonies) of Asian cultural mores clashing with American social freedoms. The central foursome are actually two duos: Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), a biologist who lives with her partner, Lee (Lily Gladstone), in the latter’s shabby-chic American Craftsman house, and Angela’s college friend Chris (Bowen Yang), who rents the property’s garage apartment with HIS partner, Min (Han Gi-Chan), an art student who has left his wealthy industrial family behind in Seoul.

Angela and Lee are on their second round of IVF, fingers crossed; Chris is stalling a graduate thesis while leading birding groups made up mostly of older women who want to set him up with their nephews. The complications kick in when Min’s grandmother, the steel-willed Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung), announces over a Zoom call that it’s time for Min to come home to South Korea and take over the family megacorporation. (“You are not working for the company, you ARE the company,” is how she puts it.)

To stay behind (and because he’s still in the closet to his family), Min announces he’s planning to marry … Angela. Which only puts Grandmother on the next plane to SeaTac, which means Min and Angela suddenly have to pretend to BE a real couple. The scene in which all four friends frantically “de-queer” Lee’s house — “you have SO much lesbian literature,” Chris exclaims in exasperation — is a comic highlight of a movie that works hard to earn its laughs.

The script is credited to director Andrew Ahn and the original film’s co-writer James Schamus, and it practically ties itself into knots to keep the farcical misunderstandings and subterfuges straight. The strain occasionally shows, but the richness of the performances and the genuineness of the bonds of love and friendship more than compensate. (That and a traditional Korean wedding ceremony that’s a climactic feast for the eyes until … but I’ve said too much.)

This is Ahn’s most commercial outing after a handful of indie gems, including “Fire Island” (2022) and the luminous “Driveways” (2019), one of the late Brian Dennehy’s final movies. Ahn is one of those filmmakers who simply (and not so simply) like people: who are tickled and moved by the messes we make of our lives and the human connections necessary to clean them up.

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. Tran has survived playing Rose in the last trio of Star Wars movies — and the unconscionable fan harassment that came with it — to sink her teeth into a real role, that of a complicated woman whose insecurity stands to wreck the most valued relationship she has. Gladstone (an Oscar nominee for “Killers of the Flower Moon”) practically glows as an earth mother with quiet self-assurance, and Youn (an Oscar winner for “Minari”) commands every scene she’s in as a wise elder who realizes she still has many things to learn — a stock role the actress imbues with presence and wit.

By contrast, the top-billed Yang (“Saturday Night Live”) comes across as what he is: a gifted sketch comedian who’s still stretching his legs as a dramatic actor. (He seemed more at ease in Ahn’s “Fire Island.”) He and Han, a star of South Korean TV, are fine, but it’s the women who bring “The Wedding Banquet” home, including an uproarious Joan Chen as Angela’s mother, May, a happy narcissist who has taken Angela’s sexuality as a license for maternal bragging rights, much to the repressed rage of her daughter. Upon learning of the planned sham marriage between Min and Angela, May responds with a dismay that perfectly captures the topsy-turvy generosity of this film’s new normal: “I put years of activism into same-sex marriage, and this is what I get? My own daughter! Marrying a man!”

Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com.

Three stars. Rated R. At theaters. Contains language and some sexual material/nudity. 102 minutes.

Rating guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars okay, one star poor, no stars waste of time.