Everything Everywhere All At Once
The Daniels have crafted A24's first "blockbuster" a multiverse sci-fi action comedy masterfully steeped in family drama and an impeccable ensemble.
Multiverses. They’re so hot right now.
With Marvel stretching its wings and making mass audiences cheer while toying with the multiverse in “Loki,” “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” and coming up “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness;” and DC trying to cash in on the fun with their deeply troubled and long-delayed “The Flash," the multiverse is the new “thing” in blockbusters. So leave it to the resident “cool” indie studio A24 to attempt their own multiverse movie directed by Daniels (Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan), the directing duo behind the polarizing 2016 “Swiss Army Man” which featured Daniel Radcliffe as a talking, farting corpse. Ironically Marvel had approached the two Daniels to direct the first season of “Loki” but they turned it down to craft their own multiverse adventure and one that would give them zero restraints.
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” focuses on Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), an aging Chinese immigrant who along with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) runs a struggling laundromat. Evelyn’s life is crumbling by the minute, her relationship with her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is strained as she has trouble grappling with her white girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel), she’s on the verge of divorce, the laundromat is about to be audited, and her father (James Hong) who previously disowned her has arrived from China to stay in her family’s cramped apartment. Seem like a lot? Well all of this is covered in the first 10 minutes, creating a stressful environment to put the audiences inside the head of Evelyn.
But things start to become much crazier once Evelyn, Waymond, and her father visit the IRS building, as Waymond’s personality suddenly flips and warns his wife of the multiverse’s imminent destruction and that she is the only one truly capable of saving it from the ominous villainess known as Jobu Tapaki. Thus, Evelyn starts traveling across the multiverse and into different alternate realities to acquire the skills she needs to save herself as well as the infinite amount of multiverses.
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” isn’t your typical A24 film, the stakes are gargantuan, the absurdity is all done with a wink and a nod, and the combination of action, sci-fi, and comedy gives the film a more “blockbuster” vibe. Yet underneath all the insanity involving hotdog fingers, googly eyes, and butt plugs, there’s a deeply human story about family, acceptance, and learning to acknowledge that not everybody will think and act the same way you do. At the crux of it, the Daniels have painted a portrait of the strained relationship between a mother and a daughter.
The crazy ambition in terms of filmmaking is present throughout, even for a film with a $25 million budget (while high for A24, it is still quite low for the sci-fi genre), this is a film that deserves a massive audience. Think if Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze (or Michel Gondry) decided to present their own take warped sci-fi amalgamation of “The Matrix” and “The Raid.” The results are far better than you may expect. The film is weird and gets more absurd than any movie in recent memory, yet the Daniels present in such a way that feels organic and feels natural to the story, to the point where you can’t help but to just go along with the insanity. There are certain scenes that’ll have you feeling several conflicting emotions at once where you’re on the verge of tears but also holding back laughter. There’s never been a movie quite like “Everything Everywhere All At Once” and the boldness provides a sense of hope for genre films to break away from more conventional molds and into exciting and more unexpected places. Audiences walk into the latest Marvel film and walk out getting exactly what they were expecting. “Everything Everywhere All At Once” is aware some of it’s plot-points are a bit predictable, but the core storyline is told in a way that makes it difficult to predict what may happen next.
Michelle Yeoh gives without her doubt one of the greatest most electric performances of her long and established career as Evelyn, switching personalities on a dime and knowing the perfect way to convey every emotional beat. From the action, to the physical comedy, and the emotional moments, she gives a performance that will be hard to top. Ke Huy Quan makes his on-screen comeback in a big way, exuding that same aura of whimsy and charisma that he brought to the screen when he played Short-Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies.” Stephanie Hsu gets her movie star moment as Joy, controlling the screen with an intense but irresistibly attractive personality that will no doubt land her some major roles in the future. Jamie Lee Curtis is comedy dynamite in her supporting role as Deirdre the apathetic IRS agent who somehow keeps finding her way into Evelyn’s otherworldly journey and commits to doing things onscreen that many other vets of her caliber would scoff at.
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is unlike anything that has ever graced the screen, it’s a film that carries an immense amount of confidence and tells a beautiful story through the lens of a surrealist sci-fi action comedy. The Daniels have truly outdone themselves and have proved themselves to be two of the most promising and intriguing filmmakers in the industry.