Alright! Today I'm reviewing A24's most recent smash and the best multiverse movie of 2022, the Daniels-directed Everything Everywhere All at Once. For this review, I'm going to be shying away from specific nitty-gritty plot details and focusing more on the general impression made by the film because, dear reader, the less you know about the movie going into it, the more wonderful your experience will be.
But, for a general overview, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a multiverse family drama where an overworked laundromat owner is called upon by her husband from a different earth to stop their daughter, who has become a multiverse god and is threatening reality. Right off the bat it's a great "chosen one" hook and a visually trippy one at that.
The movie is fantastically imaginative, bending reality and establishing multiverse rules in ways that are clever enough to make you feel smart for understanding them, but never too intellectual to confuse you. It's a delicate balance that the movie does extremely well. There's no moments where they have to break the rules, no moments where something comes out of nowhere, no plot armor for the characters. Everything makes sense as it is depicted. It is completely self contained.
The film is wonderfully weird, fully taking advantage of its multiverse premise. So many different gags, jokes, and fun twists on reality exist, each one tied into the plot. I admire it when a joke is ingrained into the plot. However, and this is basically my one complaint about the movie - one joke just went too far. The hot dog finger reality made for a great cutaway gag, but then it just. kept. coming. back. I respect them for committing to the bit and I laughed each time, but it was so unnerving and, dare I say, too weird for my tastes. These hot dog fingers are also available for sale on A24's website.
For the most part though, the movie was fantastically weird and I really admired how many different realities they were able to fit into the movie, each one special and different than the last. The movie's visual effects were also fantastic, never having a bad VFX moment - a refreshing change of pace from CGI-bloated blockbusters.
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Due to a concept in the film that allows people to borrow abilities from their multiversal counterparts, amazingly choreographed action scenes happen throughout that bend the mind of the audience and are just well choreographed in general. Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan are well renowned martial arts industry experts, and the fact all these action scenes feel so well done lends a lot to the film. They never feel out of place either.
I also really loved the performances in the film. The aforementioned Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) and Ke Huy Quan (The little kid from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) give career best performances, powerfully playing the overworked laundromat owners and selling every moment of the family drama. Ke Huy Quan especially, he's fantastic in every scene.
I also love the family dynamic. You'll probably never see a movie quite like this again - one part action adventure, one part fantasy, one part absurdist comedy, and then one part family dynamic, the last of which is the most important and the one that sells the film. Behind all the blitz and glitz of the cool multiverse action, there's always a beating heart to the movie that endears it far beyond quirky multiverses can. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't getting teary eyed during a few scenes.
The movie's also hilarious. Some of the gags, like the hot dogs, didn't appeal to me, but every gag had a pay off and tied into the movie (As far as I could tell). I didn't expect that, but I won't complain about it either. The one thing I will complain about is the movie's explicitly R-Rated bits (Because, all things considered, it's PG-13 in terms of violence and sex and only has five F-bombs to push it over) dragged it down. For the most part everything in the movie was universally funny, but the "we're R-Rated so we can do R-Rated bits" never landed (Namely the blink-and-you'll-miss-it uses of dildos as weapons and two brief scenes involving BDSM).
The thematic intensity of the movie is also admirable. Existential dread and nihilism run rampant throughout the film's themes, striving to answer the question of "Why?" It's a question everyone wonders at some point, and the film's answer (Because, unlike Pixar's Soul, it actually answers the questions it proposes) is quiet and subtle, beautifully wrapping up the emotional drive of the film.
Other than ruining hot dogs for me, Everything Everywhere All at Once provided a wonderfully weird and completely unique movie experience. I've never seen a movie like it before, and I'll never see a movie like it again. There's something that inexplicably draws you to the film - a je ne sais quoi factor that hits just right in a way that most movies ignore.
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