When I first saw Everything Everywhere All at Once when it first came to theaters, I left the theater absolutely gobsmacked. I was astounded and confused but I loved it. I had never seen a film like that before, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The film was wild, with kung fu fighting, crazy things happened in nearly every scene, yet it was profound and contained a message about kindness, acceptance and healing. There were people with hot dog fingers and people exploding into confetti, a hibachi chef with a raccoon hidden under his hat! At times it was funny and silly, even with cartoon sound effects, but then somber and serious. It sounds like it would be a big mess, but it wasn’t. It was perfect.
The story centers around Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), a middle aged Asian American woman who runs a laundromat with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). On this particular day, she has a lot on her plate: her father is in town, they’re throwing a Chinese new year party tonight, her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is wanting to introduce her girlfriend to her grandfather and they have a meeting with an IRS agent (Jamie Lee Curtis) about being audited. To complicate things even further, Waymond starts acting very strange as they get to the IRS building. He says he is from another dimension and together they must save the world. Also, Waymond wants a divorce.
The multiverse activity we encounter in EEAAO makes Dr. Strange and his movies look like child’s play. We don’t see a lot inside each multiverse, but rather who Evelyn is within them based on different decisions she made throughout her life. She sees who she would have become if she had not run off with Waymond to get married and live in America and many other versions of herself. When Evelyn understands her place in the multiverse more and is better at verse-jumping she realizes that a version of her daughter is the evil that must be defeated before all the universes are sucked into her everything bagel (it’s like a black hole, but way cooler). Rather than kill/sacrifice her daughter to save the multiverse, Evelyn tries to become as strong as her evil counterpart by verse-jumping to gain all sorts of abilities.
All the actors in this film do a phenomenal job making us believe all the insanity happening in this film. Michelle Yeoh makes Evelyn relatable and surprisingly bad-ass once she gets the hang of verse jumping. In the beginning, Evelyn is a bit cold, no nonsense and bossy, but by the end she’s transformed into someone so much more strong, confident and reckless. Ke Huy Quan switches back and forth from normal wimpy Waymond to bad-ass alpha Waymond with hilarious ease. One moment he’s sweet and dorky, and the next he’s taken off his fanny pack and beat up a slew of police officers with it. Stephanie Hsu has to embody Joy as an awkward young adult who is running out of steam trying to be enough for her mother, but also as Jobo, an evil carefree egomaniac. I imagine filming that first scene with Jobo in the hallway must have been so fun for Hsu. And Jamie Lee Curtis is almost unrecognizable in her fat suit and then is wild as she verse-jumps, fights and plays the piano with her toes in the surprisingly tender hot dog finger universe.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is nominated for a whopping eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert are jointly nominated for best director. Michelle Yeoh is nominated for lead actress, Ke Huy Quan for supporting actor. Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis are both nominated in the supporting actress category. This is each actor’s first Oscar nomination. The film’s other nominations include best costume design, film editing, costume design, original screenplay and original song (This Is a Life). I wouldn’t mind seeing EEAAO sweep and take home ten little Oscars.
This film is so ambitious and took a lot of risks. All the visual effects were done by a team of nine people, including the directors, who simply learned how to pull these tricks off with online videos. It takes the multiverse genre to new, unexpected heights. It’s an amazing mix of nearly every film genre rolled into one with the actors doing amazing stunts, physical comedy and heart-tugging emotional moments. And it’s weird. I mean as one point Evelyn has to fight two men with strangely phallic trophies stuck up their butts. And yet it works. It’s visually beautiful. It’s funny. It’s sincere. It’s compelling. It’s crazy. It’s amazing. It really is Everything Everywhere All at Once.
“Your stupid plan to somehow save your daughter has managed to piss off everyone in the multiverse. But it just might work.”
The Best Picture Project 