Movie Review: Everything Everywhere All at Once has ... well, it all

Moving Pictures By Mo Burford

Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniels, 2022)

Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang in Everything Everywhere All At Once

I’ll be upfront: Everything Everywhere All At Once is my favorite film of the year so far. I’ll go further:  In a movie landscape full of superheroes and super-powered beings, this is one of the best, if not  the best, of the genre. Something that can hold the absurdity and the melodrama, the heartfelt  and the comedic, the quiet moments of connection and the heart-pounding excitement of battle.  Movies within movies; lives within lives. It’s beautiful and sad and fun and amazing to behold up  on the big screen. What else can you ask for from a movie? This is the superhero movie I have  been waiting for—but it’s also not just a superhero movie. Daniels (director duo Dan Kwan and  Daniel Schienert) have truly created a marvel, but thankfully not for Marvel. 

Everything Everywhere All At Once is the story of Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) and her Chinese American immigrant family—her husband Waymond, Wang (Ke Huy Quan), her daughter Joy  Wang (Stephanie Hsu), and the grandfather, Gong Gong (James Hong)—as they struggle to  connect and find meaning in a universe of struggle, chaos and nihilism. Oh, and also save the  universe. In this struggle we see many versions of our characters—literally, versions from  different universes—many of which are very good at fighting.    

The cast is phenomenal. Michelle Yeoh, probably best known in the U.S. for Crouching Tiger,  Hidden Dragon, gives a brilliant and nuanced performance that in many ways encompasses the  breadth of her career, from genre action films to art house drama. Throughout the film's many  iterations, the family has to confront/battle/engage with the tax auditor, Dierdre Beaubeirda, a  figure that is at times frustrating, menacing and tragic, and is brilliantly played by Jamie Lee  Curtis.

And we’d be remiss not to mention James Hong, a mainstay of film and television for over  40 years, and who is perhaps best known in film for his role in John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little  China—a truly under appreciated film that you really should go watch right now.

But for me, the breakout performance of the film was Ke Huy Quan, who as a child played  Short Round in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom and Data in The Goonies—two childhood  favorites of mine and, I think, many of my generation. His performance throughout the film,  including his action sequences, is completely brilliant and worth the price of admission on its  own.  

Speaking of which, the action in Everything Everywhere All at Once was some of the best I’ve seen in  years. Rather than the weightless CGI action of current blockbuster films, the sequences in this  film had weight, and it was shot so that hits had impact and fights had visceral stakes. But they  were also shot inventively—you see the creativity up on the screen in front of you. They’re funny,  yet without forsaking tension. It will perhaps seem overblown, but the first movie that came to  mind, in terms of the visceral excitement and joyful wonder I felt when I watched some of these  fight scenes, was when I first saw The Matrix. But it also has the chaotic playfulness of something  like Who Framed Roger Rabbit—it was no surprise to discover in an interview that both movies were  foundational for Daniels (two more of my childhood favorites, for those keeping score). 

And it’s fun! Sure, I cried over and over again during the film, but it was also a blast. In contrast  to the bleak slog that was last month’s The Batman, Everything Everywhere All At Once is actually able  to balance different emotional tones without getting bogged down in any one. And I mean that in  terms of the comedy as well. Most films that allege to be comedy or try to be funny throughout  tend to lose the thread in the last act of the movie, scrambling to find stakes that the audience  can cling to as they resolve the movie with a seriousness that belies the film’s earlier tone. But  Everything Everywhere All At Once keeps those plates spinning in the air, from the first to the last  shot. 

(Sidenote: If you’d like to see a pure comedy from start to finish, that never sacrifices laughs for  bogus stakes, might I recommend the tragically under-appreciated and spectacular Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar.) 

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 

(Five stars)  

Everything Everywhere All At Once is now showing at The Hollywood Theater and other selects  cinemas in Portland, OR. 

Questions, comments, movie suggestions? Email Mo at movingpicturesccc@gmail.com For more reviews and to see his up-to-date movie log, follow Mo at Letterboxd