Everything Everywhere All at Once is unlike any movie audiences will see this year. Wildly creative and touching, writer-directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known collectively as Daniels) meticulously craft a film that is as imaginative as it is intense. Everything Everywhere All At Once is weird in the best of ways, emotional, smart, and ready to take viewers on a ride they won’t soon forget.
The film follows Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), a middle-aged Chinese American business owner who is struggling with everything. Her laundromat is not doing so well, her marriage to husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) is on the rocks, she still feels distant from her previously estranged father (James Hong), and Evelyn’s relationship with her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is strained. On top of all that, Evelyn finds herself in the midst of an IRS audit headed by a stern agent named Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). Evelyn is trying to salvage her crumbling relationships while avoiding her own feelings of inadequacy. Everything changes, however, when Evelyn is made aware of a multiverse — multiple versions of herself who branched off because a different choice was made, each of which took them on different paths — and is told she is crucial to saving it.
Everything Everywhere All at Once dwells in a very wondrous, chaotic world, one that is bound by thin rules and occasionally zany nonsense. It makes the film incredibly fun and wholly unpredictable, which is to its benefit. At its center, however, is a very grounded story, bolstered by a moving performance by Michelle Yeoh. She is the beating heart of the film, imbuing Evelyn with anxious tendencies, unbridled energy, and a desperate need to throw everything away and save it all at once. Yeoh conveys the strength, apprehension, and earnestness required to make Evelyn’s emotions feel as deep as they do and her nuanced performance delivers. Ke Huy Quan is a particular standout here, tasked with playing a very confident version of Waymond, a regretful optimist, and Evelyn’s often exasperated husband. More than anyone in the film, Waymond is the glue that holds it all together and the actor's portrayal is a memorable one. Stephanie Hsu as Joy bares her soul and the emotions she conveys — anger, frustration, love — are raw and heartbreaking.
The film ponders the world and whether anything really matters. Is anything worth fighting for when the chaos of living in a social media-connected world, where everyone is constantly splitting their attention and energy between a constant and devastating news cycle, their own life struggles, and whatever hot button issue is at the forefront? Everything matters and nothing does. Everything Everywhere All at Once sorts through the disarray, allowing Evelyn a chance to understand exactly what the perceived villain Jobu Tupaki (Hsu) feels while simultaneously pushing her to fight for something, anything, even if it all seems hopeless. To that end, the film, even in all of its multiversal action, is endearing and hopeful.
The film handles its primary themes well, but it is most heartwarming when focused on the dynamics of Evelyn’s family. She is tired of her husband and daughter, but she’s also got a lot of her own issues to sort through, issues that stem from Evelyn’s own relationship with her father. Evelyn and her family are very much the heart of the story and their relationship with each other — tense, loving, complicated — is the fuel that keeps the movie going. When things get to a head, it’s up to Evelyn to sort through her own discontentment and The Daniels skillfully push her to do so, culminating in an ending that has just the right amount of emotion to work.
Visually, Everything Everywhere All at Once is spectacular and unhinged, willing to take things to the next level in a bid to explore the multiverse and all it holds. There is so much going on and it’ll take several rewatches to catch everything, but there is something utterly intoxicating and mesmerizing in the way the effects and multiverse-hopping are employed. The Daniels made a film that masterfully utilizes sci-fi and action to tell a thoughtful, heartfelt, and nuanced story about family and the life that is worth fighting for. All told, Everything Everywhere All at Once has something for everyone, and audiences will be pulled in by the film’s fantastically imaginative world and the message at its core.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is playing in theaters as of April 1. The film is 132 minutes long and is rated R for some violence, sexual material, and language.
In Everything Everywhere All at Once, a middle-aged laundromat owner (Michelle Yeoh) is distracted from her financial and family issues by a multiversal crisis. With just her husband (Ke Huy Quan) to her through the confusion, she must contend with her overbearing traditional father (James Hong), a pencil-pushing auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis), and her emotionally-distant daughter (Stephanie Hsu).
