An absolute exhilarating blast from directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, "Everything Everywhere All at Once" proves improbably worthy of its title and then some. As a critic, it can sometimes be difficult to come up with a suitable answer when someone asks you what new stuff they should watch. There are a lot of different tastes out there, and for every person who might love a focused indie drama, there are two more who would prefer a big sci-fi throwdown with lots of cool effects and dope fight scenes. Well, here, at last, is a film that can be equally recommended to both tastes, and many more besides.
It is, however, a difficult film to discuss in a review setting. Not because there aren't things to celebrate -- oh, man, are there things to celebrate! -- but part of the fun of the film comes from going in knowing next to nothing about it. It's a leap of faith, the sort of thing you really need to experience before you can talk about. I would even avoid the trailer, if possible, to go in to the experience (as I did), as cold and clueless as possible.
I'll do my best to preserve the mystery, while heaping praise upon it. I can tell you it concerns a Chinese-American family -- beleaguered mother, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh, in an absolute dervish of a performance); her sweet-but-passive husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan); and their disaffected 20-something daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), who has come out to her parents, but whose parents have not explained things to the rest of the family, primarily Gong Gong (James Hong), Evelyn's now wheel-chair-bound father, who many years ago threw her out of the house for wanting to leave China and marry Waymond -- that owns a failing laundromat. The couple are in the midst of a particularly difficult patch, both financially and emotionally, with an IRS audit of their messy finances and deductions, and Waymond handing Evelyn divorce papers, not because he wants to dissolve the marriage, but because he hopes it will force her to reconcile with him and rejuvenate their relationship.
In the IRS office, holding piles of loose papers and receipts, and setting them before the haggard agent, Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn and Waymond are on the verge of losing their business and each other. It certainly seems grim, but while at the office, something extraordinary happens that changes absolutely everything (everywhere!), and the trajectory of the characters' paths are thrown into a tumult.
As with the current contretemps in the MCU, the happening involves the idea of multiverses, and parallel realities all coinciding in potentially catastrophic ways. Unlike the MCU, the resultant chaos includes dildo fights, hot-dog fingers, many intricate kung fu battles, and a gustatorily impressive raccoon (well, actually the last two aren't beyond the realm of possibility for Marvel). It sounds ludicrous, silly, and potentially inane, but laced through the whole bug-nuts enterprise is the strong thread of emotional loss, heartbreak, and despair, brought to life by Yeoh, and the wonderful ensemble cast, who keep it from ever boiling all the way over into abject absurdism. It's the kind of film that packs as much of an emotional punch as one of Yeoh's devastating open-palm strikes.
So brilliantly is it conceived and conjured together, after the first few haphazard minutes in the IRS office, wherein Evelyn's life is tossed like a Waldorf salad, you have little choice as a viewer but to give in to its madcap pace and style, and hang on for dear life as it shoots you across its expanse like a bullet-train. Approach this wondrous concoction with an open mind, and an expectation of giddy insanity and I promise you won't be disappointed. My only caveat: Do it sooner rather than later, before word gets out, and too many of its mysterious wondrousnesses will be prematurely exposed to you.
‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’
90 Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Stephanie Hsu, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tallie Medel, Jenny Slate, Biff Wiff, Aaron Lazar, Brian Le, Sunita Mani
Directors: Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
Rating: R
Running time: 2 hours, 19 minutes
In English, Cantonese and Mandarin with English subtitles
Playing theatrically
The actions of IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis) inadvertently set off a chain reaction that imperils the world as we know it in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the equal parts sci-fi, family drama, and kung fu comedy from directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.