MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Everything Everywhere All At Once, directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Daniels), is as appropriately named as a movie could be: It is absurd and simple, visually overwhelming and deeply sentimental; a sci-fi action movie, a family drama, and a comedy that will make you laugh, cry, and enter an existential crisis. It is about the grand scheme of things, the significance of every single choice a person could make that could change the course of their lives forever, the infinite possibilities that come from a lifetime of nothingness, and at the heart of it all, choosing Joy.
Filmed with a budget of $25 million, a visual and practical effects team composed of five people (including the two directors!) and the great Michelle Yeoh, this movie was a dream to watch; one that got away with the most ridiculous scenes about rocks, butt plugs, and hotdog fingers. It left moviegoers asking, “Is this the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life?”
The answer might be yes.
Everything Everywhere All At Once doesn’t just explore the multiverse, it also tackles themes of intergenerational trauma, existentialism vs nihilism, and the Asian immigrant experience through Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese owner of a laundromat who’s just trying to pay her taxes, suddenly being told by an alternate universe version of her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) that she’s the only one who can save the world. All Evelyn wants to do is pay her taxes.
It all comes to a head at the IRS. The action begins at the introduction of the multiverse through Alpha Waymond, and at a punch in tax auditor Deirdre’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) face. Suddenly, Waymond is fighting the police with a fanny pack, Deidre shifts from harrowed tax auditor to multiverse cop with the abilities of a pro wrestler, and the merciless, multiverse villain, Jobu Tupaki (Stephanie Hsu), who turns out to be Evelyn’s estranged daughter Joy, is revealed.
One moment Evelyn is a tired laundromat owner living the unfulfilled American dream, the next she’s flying through the multiverse in shocks of color and adapting the abilities of an alternate version of herself that’s a kung fu master.
The action sequences are tight and cinematic; and the visual effects are seamless, overwhelming; an assault on the senses in the best way possible. I later found out that this was personally done and the verse-hopping sequence was filmed on three LED panels while using stock footage of one of the directors walking through the streets of New York. Discovering that all 500 of the visual effects were made in the team’s bedrooms during the pandemic made it even more miraculous. And all of it, the action-packed, wonderfully choreographed sequences and dizzying visual effects, was undercut by a gripping sense of helplessness and discovery, under the persistent weight of what could-have-beens and nihilistic dread.
The sheer humanity in the midst of all this impossibility is what makes this movie as compelling as it is.
Michelle Yeoh is the foundation of everything, present in every single scene and playing the role of Evelyn with an air of exhaustion laced with exasperation and perfect comedic timing—underneath it all is an emotional sincerity that surprises when it peeks out. Laugh or cry, you never know what she’ll have you do next.
Each of the significant relationships Evelyn grew to resent became a reason to escape from everything she’s ever known. Her love and frustration for her daughter Joy feed off each other and has only succeeded in pushing her further away. The discovery of Joy’s secret identity as Jobu Tupaki leads Evelyn into doing everything she can to be like her in order to defeat her. Jobu provokes this growth by antagonizing her, only for it to be revealed that this was the only way Evelyn could ever understand what she felt.
This relationship drives the narrative, and it stings: at the end of the day, and at the edge of the universe, a daughter just wanted her mother to meet her where she was.
Stephanie Hsu plays this role with style, finesse, and an anger brewing under the surface as Joy, that fully erupts in the most absurd fashion as Jobu Tupaki, combined with that ever-present nihilistic dread that Evelyn almost finds herself succumbing to, only to be pulled back by the voice of her husband.
One of the most compelling relationships in this movie is Evelyin’s relationship with Waymond. Played by Ke Huy Quan, who hasn’t graced our screens for the past 20 years, returns to film with a bang: catapulting seamlessly between Evelyn’s sweet, soft-spoken husband and into the assertive, grief-ridden Alpha Waymond, sometimes in the same scene. He brings with him a Tony Leung-like angst in other lifetimes. Their relationship was born from a choice in Evelyn’s life that’s also her biggest regret. And it allows Waymond to deliver the most gut-wrenching line that a film about the multiverse has yet to deliver: “I wanted to say… In another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.”
In the end, Evelyn chooses Joy, again and again, despite the pleas to let her go. To choose Joy in every sense of the word — this is the message that makes this movie so deeply moving; the choice to fight for Joy amidst all the chaos and confusion, amidst all the despair and struggle, and learning how to survive with kindness and love. To see the size of the multiverse and still choose Joy. To cherish these few specks of time.
All in all, it’s highly recommended to experience this film and see what all the fuss is about. There may be mild whiplash, intense bouts of crying, and random, startling laughter in between, but it’s spectacular, unbelievable, and everything, in every sense of the word.
Watch Everything Everywhere All At Once, now showing in US and Canadian theaters. It is being rolled out in select countries across the world.
