When trailers initially came out for Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, it’s safe to say that no one had a single clue about what the heck they just saw. Although it appeared to be an absurdist trippy multiversal action film featuring acclaimed Chinese actress, Michelle Yeoh, this weird movie actually won a lot of people over. It became a huge success both critically and financially for production company, A24, and is currently a front runner in the Academy Award session (holding the highest number of nominations with 11). Middle-Aged Chinese American immigrant Evelyn Quan (played by Michelle Yeoh) is frustrated and emotionally distant due to the unfulfilling life she leads with her family and their barely surviving laundromat, made even more stressful now that she is forced to look after her demeaning father, Gong Gong (played by James Hong). Her husband, Waymond (played by Ke Huy Quan) tries to act as the positive beacon, but her constant dismissal of him has caused him to consider divorce, and her daughter Joy (played by Stephenie Hsu) also feels emotionally frustrated due to her mother’s lack of acceptance towards her non-Chinese girlfriend. While planning a Lunar New Year Party for her store, Evelyn finds herself being confronted by another more capable version of Waymond; one who informs her of the Multiverse and how he is searching for a particular Evelyn who can help him defeat Jobu Tupaki, the ‘’Alphaverse’’ version of their daughter Joy who’s gone insane and has created a black hole-like device that could destroy everything in all universes. By gaining different powers from alternate more successful versions of herself, Evelyn has to confront this version of her daughter to save her own family, even though the windows into her other lives make her start to question her own and whether its worth fighting for. This film did a lot of good and reignited or kick-started a lot of careers. Despite being a niche film in many ways with components that keep it from its true potential, it still has a lot of positives worth combing over.

When you look at what this plot is, it has a lot of blockbuster attributes, with its inclusion of the multiverse, as well as getting action stars to fight off against a very flamboyantly-designed threat with crazy shenanigans, it has the pieces to become that kind of film, but it instead goes for high-end, emotionally-deep, existential family drama with the topping being the absurdity of the visuals, concept and ideas. This balance between surreal and grounded realism can and has been used effectively in several different projects, and those that can do both often have the benefit of not only feeling more real and personal with the topics they discuss, but also a lot more unique and creative because they told something relatable through a manner that wasn’t predictable. When it comes to this movie, it nails that element at least 50% of the time, as the emotional stakes and character connections are actually very strong, and the opening and ending of the film highlight that very well with wonderfully directed, acted and written scenes that truly capture a real-life struggle of depression, feeling overlooked and unsatisfied with your life, and feeling like a failure next to others around you or even possible futures you yourself could’ve taken. It shows the strength and potential that comes with wanting to present something in an ”out-of-the-box” manner, and for the most part, it seemed to pay off and many did consider the messages presented by the film and were really affected by it. However, with absurd concepts and ideas also comes extreme risk, and the movie does sadly suffer a lot of failed risks. Even though the movie said it was going to be odd and weird, the level of odd and weird it goes to is a little too much even for what they started with, and it becomes harder to stomach the more pointless it feels. In those previous examples, the weirdness is accepted and even sometimes tolerated because it has a purpose and a reason for its oddities, whereas a lot of the dumb things that happen in this film feel like they exist just because the directors want to show-off weird stuff. The directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known collectively as The Daniels) showcased their surreal and often-times juvenile style of humor in their previous film, Swiss Army Man (the movie literally has Paul Dano jet-skiing across the sea on the gas-passing corpse of Daniel Radcliffe), and it appeared to similarly win critics over, but it demonstrates the level of comedic sensibility they put in their often introspective films, and they don’t always clash well. Even most of the blockbuster-like elements aren’t fleshed out enough to be interesting, so both feel like they drown out the legitimate strong components, resulting in a pretty unengaging and even unlikeable middle of the film.

The movie’s cast is not only predominantly of Chinese descent, but it’s filled with either actors we know and love, actors we did love but went away for a while, or actors we will grow to love later in their careers. Being the movie that got her nominated for an Academy Award, Michelle Yeoh is truly the star of this film in every sense; the movie was initially pitched with featuring her in mind, the lead role was given to her immediately after initially being one that would’ve gone to Jackie Chan, and the movie’s inclusion of various multiversal versions of characters allows the film to showcase all the qualities that make up Michelle Yeoh from an action star that’s still capable of performing truly impressive moves at the age of 60, to an actress that can truly form a character and perform the emotional and even comedic stuff very well. This character of Evelyn is very well laid-out and delivered, giving the audience the full package by showcasing a tired woman who wants to be a good person, but through constant regrets in her life, carrying her own form of parental baggage,  and basically feeling unfulfilled in every sense, causes herself to lash out at her loved one and inadvertently harm them in the process without even realizing it. She feels like a seasoned professional who can carry traits in a character that can come across as behind-the-times and even a little cold and cruel, but still handle the moments that would usually be reserved for younger performers like leading a film of this type, it’s a very strong role for her and to see so much love being given to an actress who has been woefully underrepresented is wonderful. Sadly, while Michelle Yeoh is very well treated and given a lot of time and dedication to her character, the others feel more like well-oiled cogs in the machine; still important and still treated with love and care, but not allowed to be much outside of their purpose in the film. Its fantastic to see Ke Huy Quan back after years of being unable to find work after his roles in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and The Goonies, and that age hasn’t stopped him being effortlessly charming and likeable as well as legitimately cool and capable in his action scenes, but he isn’t given much to work with outside of just being the nice father and heart of the film, James Hong is an equally loved and recognized Chinese actor, but outside of a few scenes with his daughter near the end, he isn’t given much depth, Jamie Lee Curtis gets one scene where she’s not just a cartoon character but it’s only a few minutes long, and Stephenie Hsu does quite well throughout the film as the antagonist and as Evelyn’s daughter (that ending scene between the both of them is incredibly strong), but the constant weird components mixed with the messaging makes it hard to fully flesh her out as an individual. Everyone in this film is acted fantastically, its just that they’re at the whim of the directing and the writing, and that is essentially a seesaw of how you can be presented.

The visuals of the film are equally as out-there and bizarre as the film’s content and writing, but they can be appreciated a little more. The movie is a very eye-catching one with the multiple different looking environments, with the equally unique looking people and even sometimes the unique looking designs and outfits. There’s clearly a lot of inspiration for this film from a variety of styles like martial arts, romance, K-pop, sci-fi, etc, and for the most part, those homages and visual cues do look nice and don’t overcrowd themselves because it feels more like its tasting the styles rather than fully utilizing them. From an action standpoint, all the stunt work and choreography no doubt handled by the actors themselves (again, Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan look fantastic in these moments) looks great and its nice seeing this kind of Chinese martial arts film put into the centre again and made more mainstream. Its produced by Anthony and Joe Russo, who have been attached to several action projects, so that mixed with the martial talent of the actors bled nicely together to work in this film, but with that said, it doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary. Clearly it was just an element used to show-off its two leads and not really meant to be a whole focus, so its understandable but when it is there, it does look pretty great. From a comedic standpoint, something as divisive as humor is bound to be considered when thinking over this movie and how much people are willing to stomach with how random and how pretty ridiculous it gets in part. The main reason why it feels like it doesn’t work is because it feels so unnecessary and how every over-the-top thing they do isn’t given a good enough reason for why it is what it is, but rather just because the Daniels have their style, and to their credit, it has worked out for them so maybe it truly is just a preference thing.

For a movie like this to even be considered Oscar-worthy is honestly pretty surprisingly. Not because the people involved don’t deserve it, but its just such a bizarre, tonally-mixed, genre-bending film that isn’t usually what Academy members prefer. As a whole, the film does sadly have pretty glaring holes that do keep it back from working fully as the middle section is the weakest portion and the strange weird stuff is not given enough purpose to really feel worth it (there is literally an action sequence with Michelle Yeoh and two guys with trophy ornaments shoved up their butts), but even then, that’s half of their style of directing that fails, whereas the other half seems pretty great and captures a lot of emotional beats very well. The acting is very strong (especially from the leads), it does talk about important topics and highlights a culture in a very strong way, and it feels like a great love letter to so many different types of films as well as its cast members. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is a unique movie with a lot to admire (as well a lot of questionable stuff to get through) and results in an overall pretty great film (although the hot-dog fingers were a bit much).

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