The Pitch: Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) has lived a life of quiet, overwhelmed lament. There are so many things she could have done, so many hers she could have been.
Instead, she’s a middle-aged owner of a failing laundromat, with a miserable husband gunning for divorce (Ke Huy Quan’s Weymond), a withdrawn daughter (Stephanie Hsu’s Joy), and an increasingly frail father (James Hong’s Gong Gong) who doesn’t yet know that his granddaughter is gay. It gets worse: It’s tax season, and their unsympathetic IRS auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis’ Deirdre) is breathing down their necks.
As if that weren’t complicated enough, the IRS office becomes a battleground for the fate of the multiverse as Evelyn learns that she’s the only one who can stop a multi-dimensional agent of chaos named Jobu Tupaki from undoing the fabric of reality itself. And to do that, she’ll have to tap into the skills, experiences, and memories of her other selves, no matter how many other identities it takes.
Everything Everywhere All At Once (A24)
Including the Kitchen Sink: That paltry pair of paragraphs above is just about as barebones as you can get when describing the dizzying spectacle of Everything Everywhere All at Once. A24’s latest comes courtesy of the directing duo known as Daniels, best known for the “Turn Down for What” music video and 2016’s farting-corpse curio Swiss Army Man — they’re filmmakers of incredible, almost excessive imagination, throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks and reveling in everything that splatters to the floor anyways.
The concept of the multiverse, one that modern moviegoing audiences have been strangely prepared for lately (thanks Marvel!), gives them the perfect vehicle for their kind of dadaist experimentation. There are some loose rules, to be sure, albeit ones that allow for Daniels’ penchant for whimsy: Essentially, you can tap into your alternate selves by performing random actions you wouldn’t do in everyday life (thus bonding you with the version of you that did), forcing Evelyn to confess earnest love to Deirdre in the middle of an attack or make someone eat their own boogers to pick up a useful skill.
From there, Evelyn gets to experience the kinds of lives she could have led. In one, she’s a sign-flipper; in the other, a hibachi chef — both give her necessary fighting skills to survive the melee that ensues when Topaki’s goons take over their main-universe selves in the IRS office.
Somewhere, she’s a Michelle Yeoh-like movie star; elsewhere, she’s a sentient rock with googly eyes. Every minute, there’s a new world to discover, another silly gag for Daniels to relish in (three words: hot dog fingers). It’s an overwhelming, giddy delight, one that asks you to throw your hands up and go with its kaleidoscopic extremes.
Everything Everywhere All At Once (A24)
No Time for Love: But somehow, for all its dadaist absurdism and blink-if-you-miss-it pace, Daniels weaves the chaotic possibilities into the multiverse into a cohesive story about the aches and pains of the road not traveled, and the need to carve out your own meaning in a meaningless universe.
Jobu Tupaki’s modus operandi is explained, rather simply, by the living contradiction that is the everything bagel: if you put everything on a bagel, what more is left? And if you’ve experienced everything that the multiverse can offer, what’s the point of any of it?
That Daniels can not just control their own chaos, but focus it into something this thematically cogent, feels nothing short of miraculous. No matter how many fanny-pack weapons or heads shattering into confetti come Evelyn’s way, it’s all in service of their protagonist’s ongoing fight against her own insecurities.
The cast certainly helps: Yeoh’s never turned in a bad performance, but she gets to stretch her muscles (both acting and action) more than she’s had to in years, playing flummoxed and vulnerable in ways that belie the stoic badass archetypes she’s been pushed into since her breakout in the West.
Everything Everywhere All At Once (A24)
Doubly revelatory, though, is Ke Huy Quan, returning from acting retirement in a notable role eclipsed only by his star-making turn as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. To their credit, the media-literate Daniels throw him a few “very funny”s, but he also carries a good deal of the film’s emotional and thematic weight.
From scene to scene (and sometimes in the same shot), he’s got to play weary husband, Kyle Reese, Tony Leung from In the Mood for Love, and even Jackie Chan (Ke has built a respectable career as a stunt coordinator in recent years), and he fills each pair of shoes perfectly. Come for Yeoh, but stay for Quan.
Their co-stars are just as wonderful, whether it’s Hong’s doddering dryness, Hsu’s double-bladed iciness, or Curtis trying her hand at doing the stalky-stabby thing herself for once (that it happens in a dowdy spinster wig and mustard-yellow sweater is so much icing on the cake).
The Verdict: There’s a little something for everyone in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and a lot for a select few of us who grew up consuming the same media diet as Daniels: Star Trek, Doctor Who, The Terminator, a host of Hong Kong action films., the list goes on.
But amid all the razor-thin editing, constantly shifting film stocks and styles, and purposefully opaque worldbuilding lies a curiously personal, universal story about the overwhelming noise of the world, and how impossible it is to deal with it. And how, at the end of the day, a little kindness might just cut through the noise and bring us all peace.
Where’s It Playing? Everything Everywhere All at Once throws a galaxy of universes at you in select theaters March 25th, before expanding to Chicago April 1st and nationwide April 8th.
Trailer:
