Everyone needs to see Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Wacky, high concept action tells an emotionally grounded story in this rare and special film.
The Short Take:
In the rollicking, mind-bending Everything Everywhere All At Once, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert prove that a film can have it all: high concept science fiction, dark humor, whimsy, fully-formed characters, grounded family drama, inventive fight choreography, and jaw-dropping visuals. A thrilling, philosophical high-wire act, the likes of which I haven’t seen since The Matrix. Michelle Yeoh slays.
Image Credit: Rotten Tomatoes
The Long Take:
When franchises and reboots dominate the proverbial marquee — no matter how good they are — it can be easy to forget what groundbreaking, original cinema looks like. Everything Everywhere All At Once, however, is unequivocally unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and I would encourage any movie lover to search it out when it releases more widely in theaters this weekend. When enough people see this genre-remixing, genre-defying masterpiece, I suspect it will be a part of the pop culture conversation for years to come.
I would struggle to describe Everything Everywhere with one or even two genres because it draws from so many traditions to construct a seamless and, as I mentioned earlier, wholly new narrative. The title is as apt for the form of the film as much as it is for the content. There are elements of quirky science fiction, drama, horror, Hong Kong action, absurdism, dark comedy, art house abstraction, indie heart, colorful Quentin Tarantino-esque violence, splashy music video editing, ordinary-person-becomes-a-spy adventure, an immigrant story, a romantic comedy for married people, a coming of age story, a coming out story, and a mother/daughter bonding story. Also jokes about bagels and hot dogs.
If I were to create a cinematic ancestry for this film, The Matrix would be at the top of the family tree. But that’s not because they’re all that similar in content or style. It’s more that they’re both films that redefine the action blockbuster by balancing high concept storytelling with stunning visuals and fun fight choreography. It’s the kind of film that has a lot to unpack but does not let its artistry stifle its entertainment value. On one level the story is extremely accessible, almost breezy. On another level, it’s highly stimulating, even mind-boggling. It winks at you and says, “Hey there. Try to keep up.”
Why or how does this all work? How is this not an incoherent, hyperactive mess? Most importantly, the filmmaking duo of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Schienert, collectively known as “Daniels,” grounds the pastiche madness in legible and relatable emotional beats that bind the loftier concepts together.
In general, I would hesitate to even give a plot synopsis because I think the less you know about this film, the more it will delight you in its effervescent originality. Don’t watch the trailer after reading my review. Don’t Google the film. Just go see it and talk to your friends about it afterwards.
I can tell you about the fully realized, compelling family dynamic at the film’s core because that’s where the more familiar (non-spoilery) emotional beats originate. Evelyn is a first generation Chinese American woman who moved to the US from China, marrying a man named Waymond Wang against her father’s wishes. Together, they start their own laundromat business. They have a daughter named Joy who never sees eye to eye with Evelyn. Evelyn claims to be open-minded and supportive of her daughter’s same sex relationship, but then wants to hide that relationship from her father (Joy’s grandfather) for fear that his heart won’t be able to handle it. Meanwhile, a gruff IRS agent gives them an ultimatum: if the Wang family can’t produce enough receipts and forms to get them out of tax trouble, they must forfeit their laundromat. At this pivotal moment, Evelyn becomes distracted by something entirely unexpected and the movie is off to the wacky races.
Image Credit: WBUR
I’d like to say more, but it’s nearly impossible to explain without spoiling everything, everywhere.
[SPOILER WARNING: Since I think not knowing a lot about this film will enhance your viewing experience, the rest of the review will be for the lucky folks who have had a chance to see this already. Please bookmark this page and come back for my breakdown later!]
Image Credit: The Verge
Phew! I can finally say the word multiverse freely.
In a lot of ways, the work that Daniels is doing is a direct response to the comic book sci-fi adventure stories that preoccupy our screens presently. In fact, they turned down an offer to helm the Marvel/Disney+ series, Loki, so that they could make their own, more personal, non-IP version. That show, if you’re not familiar, introduces the concept of the multiverse and alternate timeline versions of oneself, or variants, into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But instead of tethering themselves to pre-existing comic book characters that they did not create, Daniels opted to roam free with their creativity.
Everything Everywhere easily meets the entertaining energy of Loki or other multiversal stories in the MCU. I loved seeing Evelyn level her way up to an omnipresent super being, able to “verse jump” better than anyone. She would do some weird out of the ordinary thing to set her own life off course enough to connect with a seemingly random alternate version of herself. Any moment when I realized why she had chosen a particular alternate self, and how clever she was in appropriating the skills of that alternate for a very specific purpose in the main timeline’s fight, was pure joy. And we repeatedly get those joyful moments throughout the film.
The Daniels are able to go to so many wild places every few minutes in Everything Everywhere because they use the more out there parts of the plot to illustrate and work through the tensions between members of this family. The cosmic pain of Jobu Tapaki is one and the same with the personal heartache Evelyn has inflicted upon Joy. The Everything Bagel might be a ridiculous-looking black hole of infinite space and time, but it’s also a metaphor for Evelyn and Joy’s relationship. For years their clashes have been pulling them into a void.
The same thing happens with Evelyn and her husband. Seeing all the other lives she could have had with and without him makes her realize how much she still loves him. My favorite verse was probably the one in which she is a movie star, not just because of the glamorous costumes, but because upon talking to the version of Waymond she never married, she gains the most insight into her current relationship with her Waymond and both their failings in it. The entire cast was phenomenal, but I thought these scenes were where Ke Huy Quan owns the screen. (And yes, he played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. My, how he has grown.)
Image Credit: Collider
The varied moving parts of the film — the different layers — all work together and benefit from one another. Joy/Jobu Topaki dressing up in outlandishly hip costumes or Evelyn sucking a fly up her nose so she can jump to another universe, while fun, are not in of themselves saying anything profound. But what’s happening with the multiverse, the zany, universe-wobbling layer of the story — the threat of Jobu Topaki, the reveal that she is a version of Joy, and her attempt to lure Evelyn into the Everything Bagel void — provides another plane upon which these characters can work out their issues.
For example, both mother and daughter wanted/want to run away from their families because they fell in love with others deemed an unconventional romantic partner. Both of them feel aimless and without purpose, like they just can’t get anything right. So the undertow of the nihilistic Everything Bagel is strong, alluring like a siren’s call. There’s so much payoff in the final non-inter-dimensional scenes of the film because they’ve been working towards reconciliation figuratively the entire time.
What does this have to say about the about the multigenerational Chinese American immigrant experience? Again, I have to go back to that idea of both Evelyn and Joy leaving home and disconnecting with their roots. Evelyn is caught between two worlds. All of her hangups stem from this crossroads moment of her getting into a car with her future husband. Leaving her family and country behind defines the rest of her life. After having lived for so long in the US, she neither belongs to her “homeland” of China nor her adopted nation, the United States. Despite all the infinite universes where she has virtually every kind of profession or lifestyle, the film continually returns to that moment and how her desire to leave and her father so easily letting her go has now repeated in the next generation as Evelyn has allowed her own daughter to distance herself from the family.
The science fiction premise itself might be a metaphor for the immigrant experience, in a way that didn’t necessarily have to be specific to a first generation Chinese American. Evelyn being overwhelmed and confused by the intricacies of the infinite multiverse, having to learn a whole new set of rules in a very short amount of time, very potently echoes her experience as an immigrant struggling to achieve The American Dream. In the early IRS office scenes, she says something along the lines of, “why do you always have to use words designed to confuse us?” and uses “gross negligence” as an example. She feels that the system has been designed to keep people like her on the outskirts, trying to obfuscate bureaucracy rather than clarify and help those who may not be as familiar with the rules as well as the more nuanced corners of the English language. Evelyn stubbornly scoffs and says she doesn’t need Joy to translate for her, but in that vulnerable moment it becomes very clear that she does.
From a young age, I was frequently the mediator between my family and American bureaucracy. I used to write letters on behalf of my dad, who, like Evelyn and Waymond, is a small business owner. The letters ranged from contesting our town’s fines because they didn’t like how our backyard looked, to customer service issues or clerical errors that needed to be resolved. It’s probably subconsciously why I became an English major and wanted to be a writer; I saw how powerful effectively communicating with the gatekeepers of society could be. I can easily imagine this film working just as well if you replace Evelyn with an immigrant from another country, but I think the specificity of her experience and how that resonated with my own lends a rare authenticity to the film.
While the core story and its themes are serious and impactful, I don’t want to downplay how funny this film is. There’s a universe in which humans evolved to have floppy hot dog-like fingers and as a result shift tasks that requires any kind of dexterity to their feet. This obviously offers a lot of physical comedy, as we see characters with these hot dog hands awkwardly fumble with objects and each other, but, again, the absurdity serves a higher purpose. There’s this whole side story with Evelyn and her IRS agent, Deirdre Beaubeirdra, in which they confront an unspoken love for each other. This then spills over into “our” Evelyn and “our” agent as they come to understand each other and discover an unexpected level of empathy, understanding, and maybe even friendship. The exposition clearly states that when Evelyn verse jumps, she can access the other Evelyn’s skills, memories, and emotions. She’s able to level up her emotional intelligence too. But that doesn’t detract from the more juvenile humor of jiggling hot dog fingers.
Image Credit: Buzzfeed News
My favorite joke was the “Raccoon-couille” gag, which starts when Evelyn tries to explain what she’s recently learned about the multiverse to her own family. She tries to explain that she can use the other Evelyns as puppets, like the rat in Pixar’s Ratatouille, only she thinks it’s “Raccoon-couille.” The film then hilariously creates a whole world in which Evelyn is a chef and discovers another chef, played by Glee alum Harry Shum Jr., who has a hidden raccoon under his hat telling him how to cook. As someone who grew up thinking I was supposed to pronounce the L in salmon and that amphitheater was actually ampli-theater because my multilingual family pronounced those words a little differently, I related to this so much. The play on Pixar’s heartwarming tale and the adorable raccoon chef delighted me as well.
A close second to the raccoon subplot might be the scenes in which Evelyn and Joy are literal rocks. The pause is the perfect length for me to ask, “Wait, they’re rocks. How are they going to talk?” right before the subtitles for them pop up. The writing from start to finish is so playful, energetic, witty, and laugh out loud hilarious. I hope Daniels get at least a nomination for Original Screenplay at the Oscars next year.
Image Credit: Vulture
Every single actor in this film absolutely sells every word, including all the bizarre humor. They are the very definition of understanding the assignment. Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis are standouts in the supporting cast. They’re insanely funny and fierce. But Michelle Yeoh is, for lack of a better word, the star. I’ve always been a big fan of hers — she’s a martial arts icon and I think she’s the best Bond “girl.” She is absolutely astounding in this film, mostly because Daniels allow her to demonstrate all that she can do. This makes what we’ve seen Oscar Isaac do in Moon Knight so far look like beginner level work, which is saying something. Benedict Cumberbatch and other MCU actors who are about to play variants of themselves, take note. This is how you differentiate multiple versions of yourself as completely different and yet in essence the same character.
The wider MCU could take note as well. I would not expect a comic book blockbuster to be exactly like Everything Everywhere All At Once; that would be hard since it seems so one of a kind. But I hope that this film inspires creators working within the MCU to push the boundaries just a little bit more.
I figured some of the family stuff would resonate with you. Great review! I didn’t know they were offered Loki. We’ll have to chat more about this offline.