‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ is Messy, Kinky and Inspired

In the Daniel Brothers’ ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’, Michelle Yeoh gives an unparalleled powerhouse performance.

The idea of the multiverse is suddenly mainstream thanks to the Marvel movie machine. Produced by the Russo brothers, the duo that brought us the Thanos snap heard ’round the galaxy, Everything Everywhere All at Once subverts the idea of alternate dimensions and looks to be the final word on the subject. At the world premiere last night at SXSW, the packed crowd exploded into applause when the credits finally rolled. Then, we picked our jaws off the floor and slowly filtered back out into the real world. The new head-splitting sci-fi adventure from the Daniel brothers (Swiss Army Man) is an overwhelming assault on the senses that mostly works due to its fearlessness and whacked-out sense of wonder.

Michelle Yeoh gives a career-defining and life-spanning (you’ll see what I mean) performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once that celebrates her countless contributions to cinema. Her grounded depiction of an immigrant mother trying to hold her family, and the universe, together is the beating heart of a film that so desperately wants to go completely off the rails. Yeoh’s comedy chops are on full display here. Her prowess as a martial arts master is taken full advantage of, especially during a kung fu battle between Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis. Playing multiple versions of herself in various dimensions, it’s hard to imagine anyone else committing to the role of Evelyn Wang with such gleeful abandon. Before the start of the film, Yeoh took to the stage to exclaim how she was “so goddamn proud” of her work in this. And she should be.

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Ke Huy Quan (The Goonies) also delivers a wondrous performance as Yeoh’s husband Raymond who goes from a tired laundromat owner to a dashing hero from another dimension in the blink of an eye. When he suddenly attacks a bunch of security guards in an IRS office with his deadly fanny pack, it’s clear that the next couple of hours are going to head in some truly bizarre directions. The fight choreography actually exemplifies the zany energy of the entire movie. Imagine a Wuxia epic with Jackie Chan or Sammo Hung on a lot of acid and you’ll start to get the idea.

It’s almost shocking how psychedelic Everything Everywhere actually gets at times. When it becomes clear that Evelyn must sacrifice her daughter Eleanor (Stephanie Hsu) in order to save the universe, the imagery starts colliding into a kaleidoscope of trippy visuals. Evelyn has to struggle to stay in her own dimension even when the other possibilities her life could have taken keep trying to barrel their way through. In a truly meta moment, Yeoh actually becomes a famous actress sitting in the theater at her own premiere staring back at us, the audience, through the portal of the screen.

Directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert aren’t afraid of a kitchen sink approach to filmmaking, especially when this kind of premise allows them to go full throttle. Every quick-cut edit and over-the-top visual is meticulously crafted and designed to blow the top of your head off. That’s the charm and the problem with their mad hat version of the multiverse. As the audience, there’s an almost addictive charge of serotonin that starts to build but to the point of near nausea. At a little over two hours long, it’s too much of a good thing.

There are all kinds of levels of kink, too. For some strange reason, characters can “verse-jump” from place to place and gain powers when they do something incredibly weird. In one of the insane highlights of Everything Everywhere All at Once, Yeoh must battle assailants using anal plugs to stay jacked into the fight. In another universe, Jamie Lee Curtis and Michelle Yeoh are lovers with sausage fingers for hands.

The whole bloody affair is undeniably crowd-pleasing and any fans of Yeoh and Curtis will be overjoyed by how fearless both actors are. With about a thousand costume changes, Stephanie Hsu is probably the one having the most fun, however. Just trying to name all the references in her wardrobe throughout the film is a movie trivia game in itself. Through all the mayhem, Everything Everywhere All at Once also manages to be incredibly profound. When you can turn a scene featuring two rocks talking to each other into a hilarious and moving experience, you’ve got to be doing something right.

• Everything Everywhere All at Once

Summary

With incredible performances by Michelle Yeoh and the entire cast, the whirlwind journey the film takes you on is ultimately a little too rough of a ride.

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