Everything Everywhere All at Once

Writers and directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (credited as The Daniels) have crafted a world-bending martial arts comedy with Everything Everywhere All at Once.  It's a film that blends pure action, Sci-Fi, multiple universes, and even a parody of a specific Pixar movie that shall remain nameless for the sake of spoilers into its plot to craft what is ultimately a story about the choices we make, and how it effects not just ourselves, but others.  The film's scope is epic, which is fitting for a movie dealing with multiple universes.  And yet, it's an achingly human and relatable story at its core.

That's because its heroine Evelyn (played wonderfully by Michelle Yeoh) and all of the variations we see of her throughout the movie via alternate timelines is so pure and human.  Whether she is running a struggling family-owned laundromat, a martial arts actress, a rock, or a sympathetic lesbian in a world where everyone have evolved differently when it comes to fingers, the script never loses sight of who Evelyn is, or Yeoh's performance.  She is what anchors the film, and the movie smartly plays upon her acting and physical stunt strength.  This really is the perfect role for her, and one that was initially written for Jackie Chan, until The Daniels decided the main character should be a woman.  It not only serves as a tribute to her talent, but a bit of her career as well.

We first meet Evelyn as a woman with a husband (Ke Huy Quan, who long ago appeared as a child actor in back-to-back Spielberg films, Temple of Doom and The Goonies) and a young adult daughter (Broadway actress Stephanie Hsu) who is trying to keep her laundromat business afloat while it is being audited by the IRS.  She seems trapped in her current life, and apparently so is her husband, who is trying to work up the courage to present her with divorce papers.  All this, and she finds herself caring for her elderly father (James Hong), who never approved of her marriage to her husband in the first place.  While attending a meeting with the IRS agent investigating her taxes (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn's husband is suddenly taken over by someone who looks like him, but claims to be the "Alpha" version of him, who has "universe jumped" into Evelyn's world in order to issue her a warning about a powerful entity that is searching the multiple dimensions and universes for her.

Every choice we make in life splinters and creates an alternate reality.  In one possible scenario, Evelyn never left China for the US with her husband, and met an instructor who trained her in Kung Fu.  In another, she's a famous opera star.  In still another universe, people are animated stick figures.  As Evelyn is dragged into all of these different alternate timelines and universes, she finds herself fighting not just for her own life, but for the lives of her family and their future.  The Evelyn that we meet from the beginning is the least successful of all the Evelyns that exist in different timelines.  And yet, she also might have the most untapped potential within her, and the power to stop an event that could destroy all the multi-verses.  

Everything Everywhere All at Once is about choices and decisions, regrets, healing pain, and finding potential within yourself that you never knew.  It mixes these human themes with world-bending fight scenes, comedic sequences that have been imaginatively inserted, and a consistently confident tone.  As the film explores multiple timelines and universes, it gradually becomes a much smaller and intimate story, and that's part of why it's been so well designed.  Despite how crazy the movie can get, it never loses sight of Evelyn or Yeoh's performance, which keeps everything grounded.  This is an exciting movie that is filled with visuals, ideas, and comic possibilities.  What's more exciting is how the movie chooses to act upon all of this, and seldom if ever misses a beat.

That's part of what makes this one of the great films of the year.  Another is just what a successful balancing act this movie is.  It mixes elements of action, special effects, comedy, and drama so effortlessly, you barely notice it happening while it plays out.  This is a masterfully constructed story that's obviously been carefully laid out so that for all of its universe hopping and parallel timelines, the audience doesn't feel overwhelmed.  This could not have been easy to achieve.  It's always nice to see filmmakers attempt something risky in Hollywood, but it doesn't always work out.  Here, all the pieces have come into place creating a wonderful entertainment.

If you think I may have revealed too much in this review, don't worry, as I've only skimmed the surface of just where this movie goes.  The goal of a movie review is to explain whether the experience a film creates works or not, and here is one that not only deserves to be experienced, but if possible, to go in with as little advance knowledge as possible.  I hope this review will inspire just that.

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