“Everything Everywhere All At Once” - Film Review
Everything Everywhere All At Once is a spectacle in the purest sense of the word. A sensory overload, especially in IMAX, the movie is a science fiction, multi-verse spanning love letter to family. The movie’s reach is expansive, but writers/directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert have managed to create an epic film that celebrates the smallness of life.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is about Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), an exhausted woman who runs a laundromat with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Their business is barely above water and their tax returns have raised a red flag for IRS employee Deidre (Jamie Lee Curtis). The audit of their expenses occurs on a busy day for the Wang family. Evelyn’s father (James Hong) has come to town for Chinese New Year and Evelyn’s daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), wants to use this opportunity to introduce her grandfather to her girlfriend, Becky (Tallie Medel). While at the audit, Waymond from another universe tells Evelyn that there’s a great evil taking over the multiverse and Evelyn is the key to saving every world and every timeline.
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That’s all anyone should know before they see the movie. So much about what makes the film special is the wild ride it takes through the different universes. To rob someone of the highs, lows, and the unexpected oddities of each universe would be cruel. The premise itself, of an unsuspecting hero being dragged into another dimension to save space and time, is not new. It’s something superheroes have been doing since their inception. However, this is not a run-of-the-mill superhero multiverse movie.
Yeoh is a bona fide movie star, and Everything Everywhere All At Once is a well-deserved showcase of her talents. Everything she’s learned in her 30+-year career is on display in this film. Yeoh is most well-known in the United States for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. While Everything Everywhere All At Once certainly uses her martial arts skills, the film exists in nearly every genre of movie (at once). Yeoh gets to have romantic, dramatic, and comedic scenes, sometimes simultaneously, as the multiverse versions of herself experience moments differently. Yeoh is the beating heart of this movie and an impeccable tour-de-force.
The story is eccentric and strange, and it seems no idea was too out-of-this-world. The movie doubles down on its oddity and makes every outrageous aspect feel normal. It’s refreshing, new, and impossible to guess what will happen next. Everything Everywhere All At Once blends different movie styles into a seamless story. There are clear homages to Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love and the martial arts movies Yeoh herself starred in. At the same time, calling Everything Everywhere All At Once a distant relative of Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women, or Alice Wu’s Saving Face would not be out of line.
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Everything Everywhere All At Once is a celebration of the multitudes that exist within individuals and how easy it is to lose sight of what’s important in life. It is a stunningly unique movie and features the explosive energy that directors like Adam McKay and Edgar Wright have desperately been trying to master.
“You are useless alone. Good thing you’re not alone,” says Evelyn toward the end of the movie. This is the thesis of the film. Humans are small and stupid, surrounded by noise that distracts them from what matters. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a brawl through time and space that is meant to prove the tenacity of a mother’s love.
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