Everything Everywhere All At Once

Today while exercising, I finished watching “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” released in 2022, on Showtime, and I will let everyone know what I thought about this most talked about film of last year.

This is a display in the purest sense of the word. Tina Kakadelis said in her review, “A sensory overload, especially in IMAX, the movie is a science fiction, multi-verse spanning love letter to family.” The movie’s reach is huge, but writers/directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert have been able to make an epic film that celebrates the little things in life.

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” is about Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), a tired woman who runs a laundromat with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Their business is struggling and their tax returns have been called danger for IRS employee Deidre, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. The audit of their expenses happens on a busy day for the Wang family. Evelyn’s father (James Hong) has arrived for Chinese New Year and Evelyn’s daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), wants to use this time to introduce her grandfather to her girlfriend, Becky (Tallie Medel). While at the audit, Waymond from another dimension tells Evelyn that there’s a great evil taking over the multiverse and Evelyn is the person to save every dimension and every timeline.

That’s all you need to know before you watch the movie. Kakadelis said, “So much about what makes the film special is the wild ride it takes through the different universes. To rob someone of the highs, lows, and the unexpected oddities of each universe would be cruel.” The story itself, of an innocent protagonist being pulled into another dimension to save space and time, is not new. This is something that we have seen in every superhero saga. However, this is not your typical superhero multiverse movie.

Kakadelis credited, “Yeoh is a bona fide movie star, and Everything Everywhere All At Once is a well-deserved showcase of her talents.” Everything she’s learned in her long-running career is being shown in this film. Yeoh is most famous in the United States for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” While “Everything Everywhere All At Once” definitely uses her martial arts abilities, the film exists in just about every genre of movie simultaneously. Yeoh gets to have romantic, dramatic, and comedic scenes, sometimes at the same time, as the multiverse versions of herself experience moments differently. Kakadelis complimented, “Yeoh is the beating heart of this movie and an impeccable tour-de-force.”

The story is weird and strange, and it looks like no idea was completely out of the norm. The movie repeats on its quirk and makes every strange look feel normal. It’s refreshing, new, and impossible to guess what will happen next. “Everything Everywhere All At Once” combines different movie styles into a whole story. Kakadelis noted, “There are clear homages to Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love and the martial arts movies Yeoh herself starred in. At the same time, calling Everything Everywhere All At Once a distant relative of Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women, or Alice Wu’s Saving Face would not be out of line.”

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” is a celebration of the scores that exist inside people and how easy it is to miss what’s important in life. It is an amazingly unique movie and shows the mass energy that directors like Adam McKay and Edger Wright have been trying so hard to get.

“You are useless alone. Good thing you’re not alone,” says Evelyn near the end of the movie. This is the thesis of the film. Kakadelis ended her review by saying, “Humans are small and stupid, surrounded by noise that distracts them from what matters. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a brawl through time and space that is meant to prove the tenacity of a mother’s love.”

I guess you can say that this film can get strange at times, but I guess that is the point of it. However, regardless of that, this is a film that you should see. If you have not liked other films take on a multiverse, like the Matrix movies or the superhero movies, then this one will satisfy you. You will probably get into the eccentric feel of the film and how convoluted it gets. If you have Showtime with your Paramount+, then check this one out. Sure, it doesn’t make sense at certain moments, but you cannot deny this film was amazing.

Thank you for joining on this review. Stay tuned tomorrow to see what I will review for this month.