Miss Flicks

Everything Everywhere All at Once: Film Review

The hype for Everything Everywhere All at Once has been crazy. I’ve seen people calling it a masterpiece and their favourite film of the year so my hopes were very high. I enjoyed the film very much but not to those levels.

The film stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, an overwhelmed Chinese-American woman who is being pulled in too many different directions and spreading herself too thin. She has to juggle running her family’s laundromat business, looking after her ailing father Gong Gong (James Hong), planning a New Year’s party and getting paperwork ready for an IRS audit. Both her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) and daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) want to have important conversations with her but she doesn’t have time to give them the attention they need.

One day, during a meeting with her IRS agent Deidre (Jamie Lee Curtis), Waymond’s alternate self “Alpha Waymond” introduces Evelyn to the multiverse. She must connect with different versions of herself to acquire new skills in order to stop Jobu Tupaki, a powerful being threatening to destroy them all.

If you have seen writers/directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert‘s previous outing Swiss Army Man – in which Daniel Radcliffe played a farting corpse (yes, really) – you’ll be somewhat prepared for how weird and absurd this film will be. We may have had a lot of multiverse action lately (including one in cinemas right now) but you won’t see anything as bold, unconventional, unexpected and utter bats**t as this.

This film refuses to be boxed into a genre. It is mostly an action-comedy (it’s really funny) but there are also elements of fantasy, sci-fi and martial arts movies, plus, if you strip all the bells and whistles away, it tells a very heartfelt, human story about a fractured mother-daughter relationship.

The fight sequences are a joy to behold. They are very creative and innovative and the actors get to use all manner of cool/weird props as weapons. Usually, I tune out during action scenes but these were so exciting and refreshing, and I always prefer hand-to-hand combat to gunfights anyway. My favourite fight scene involves a bum bag (or fanny pack for the US crowd) as a weapon – amazing.

The narrative is quite overwhelming and I struggled to follow it on the first watch (I’ve seen it twice). There is a lot going on and loads of information about the multiverse to take on board quickly. I’m not fully sure if it makes sense but the story is best enjoyed if you just roll with it. The film is 139 minutes long and the momentum lagged for me in the second chapter (it’s divided into three). I started to feel the runtime by that point and was ready for it to wrap up. There are a lot of brief cuts back and forth between universes towards the end of part two and it was too much.

This is a juicy role for Yeoh which gives her the rare opportunity to show off her martial arts skills and her acting capabilities. Her connection (or lack thereof) with Joy is the heart of the piece and Hsu delivers a raw, emotional performance that is quite moving. As someone who loves Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, it brought me so much joy seeing Quan – aka Short Round – back on my screen as an adult. All of them play different versions of their characters, which is a feat in itself, but sometimes they have to make the transition within the same scene and I was so impressed.

This film is nuts and totally out-there so it won’t work for everybody. Expect to think “what the f**k?!” several times! I may not think it’s a masterpiece but it’s still the most imaginative and original film I’ve seen in ages and it deserves to be seen.

In cinemas from Friday 13th May