Review: Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Rating

Director

Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert

Screenplay

Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert

Length

2h 19m

Starring

Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis

MPAA Rating

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Review

While human civilization might seem fairly straightforward to those living in it, there’s an absurdity to life that few films tap into so readily as Everything Everywhere All at Once. Part Monty Python and part Kung Fu Hustle, the film wants the audience to be entertained while telling its saga, but does one get in the way of the other? Absolutely.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is certainly unique. Exploring the idea of family, existential crises, and other obvious philosophical concepts, the film uses its quasi-futuristic narrative to delve into these topics in ways not often seen in film. Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn, a beleaguered laundromat owner whose father Gong Gong’s (James Hong) disappointment in her has colored her life’s goals and work. She cares for him out of love in his old age, but cannot escape the recriminations baked into their relationship. Her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) is a doting man who is slowly coming to realize that her patriarchal hang-ups are affecting their relationship in a way, even though it’s his fault the two had a falling out in the first place.

Much of these psychological elements are played out in snippets of her life examined as she discovers that she’s one of millions of versions of herself across a multiverse where one small evolutionary shift could result in humans with hot dogs for fingers or a bad ass Kung Fu warrior becoming a movie star. Throw in an impending audit with dreary IRS agent Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis) and a fractured relationship with her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), and you have a fairly familiar dysfunctional family trope enhanced by an incredibly bizarre multidimensional universe.

The performances here are all solid with Hsu standing out against a cast of familiar faces. Yeoh also does tremendous work playing several intriguing interpretations of her character, one of which is a direct callback to her own storied cinematic career. Hsu must build her character around Yeoh’s, embodying many of the same rebellious elements that characterized her early upbringing. They play incredibly well off of one another with Hsu doing her best to add an American flavor to the traditional Chinese customs of familial obligations. Curtis adds a much needed level of humor to a film that is often quite absurd when taken too seriously and her character goes along with it with a large dose of self-parody. Quan and Hong deliver solid performances, but are out-acted by their female counterparts.

There have been absurd movies throughout cinema history, but films like Everything Everywhere All at Once feel like a more modern invention. The film blends several genres together in pursuit of broader universal truths without giving them more than a slapdash treatment, hoping to cover up the inefficiencies of the plot with sensationalism.