Everything Everywhere All at Once review – absurdly good

The past few years have been all about time loops in entertainment, with films like Palm Springs, Happy Death Day, and Tenet releasing alongside games such as Death Loop, The Forgotten City and 12 Minutes. Moving into 2022, it looks like that concept may be played out, and the next hottest thing in pop culture is the multiverse concept.

Unrelated to the recent comic-book explorations of the subject is Everything Everywhere All at Once, an absurdist black-comedy drama written and directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as “Daniels”).

Everything Everywhere All at Once starts with overworked and exhausted Chinese-American laundromat owner Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), who just wants to get her taxes done. In between juggling the struggling business; her sullen, college-dropout daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu); a meek and disappointed husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan); a visit from her demanding, wheelchair-bound father (James Hong); and planning a Lunar New Year party, Evelyn is also undergoing an IRS audit. It’s safe to say that she has a lot going on.

In the elevator on the way to an audit with IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis), the usually calm Waymond is suddenly taken over by an action-movie version of himself from another universe. Hailing from the Alpha-Verse, the first universe to harness multiverse travel, Alpha-Waymond is on a mission to find one Evelyn in billions, the Evelyn who can save the multiverse from Jobu Tupaki, a god-like verse-jumper who is threatening to destroy reality.

With the new verse-jumping technology, Evelyn dives into a whirligig of multiverses. These are not only those where she has made different decisions and ended up with a better life as a chef, a kung-fu master, or an actress (in a nod to Yeoh’s own career), but also realities powered by unadulterated insanity. There’s Evelyn the rock, a pinata, and even a version of our heroine in a world where people have evolved to have hot dog sausages instead of fingers.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is truly stupendous in terms of scale, with an infinite number of universes (and therefore genres) to play in. It’s therefore hard to capture in mere words. Yet, for something so unapologetically crazy, it has a real heart at the same time. The Daniels’ script takes expansive concepts like existentialism and nihilism, and distils them into immediately relatable characters. Most of the buzz has been around Yeoh’s outstanding turn as Evelyn, but every single member of the cast is exceptional in their role, and it’s impossible to fault any of the layered, heartfelt performances.

This combination of writing and performances really sells Everything Everywhere All at Once. It’s exceedingly rare to find such a high-energy, fast-paced movie with so much action that also explores things like the dissatisfaction of missed opportunities, the blank depression of an unfulfilling life, familial responsibilities, and the toxic cycles that perpetuate between generations.

Of all the multiverse movies, Everything Everywhere All at Once is truly one of a kind. Daniels have created a unique illogical logic in how verse-jumping works that makes perfect sense for the chaos that the film embodies. They’re not just colouring outside the lines here, there are no lines. The wild, incredibly well-choreographed fight scenes are both dazzling and still coherent, completely defying explanation and imagination. They punch you straight in the eyeballs, take your breath away, and at the same time make you laugh out loud at their comedic genius, not just unending absurdity. The movie’s 2-hour-20-minute runtime passed by in what felt like moments.

With Everything Everywhere All at Once, you’re likely to walk out of the cinema mentally saturated, emotionally all over the place, and probably dizzy. The constant craziness of what’s happening is a lot to take in, sometimes too much, and might be off-putting for cinemagoers with more vanilla tastes and expectations.

Just as there were parts that made me laugh, cry, or shout out loud (it was a very empty cinema), there were scenes that made me feel wildly uncomfortable, or cringe with second-hand embarrassment. But that’s what the movie is there for. You really get to experience a bit of everything, everywhere, all at once – and that’s something special.