Review by Jon Donnis
First of all, what a great name for a film, how has no one thought of "Everything Everywhere All at Once" as a film title before?
Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as "Daniels", hence the "Film from Daniels" on the poster, the film is an absurd, crazy, multiverse genre, big-hearted, sci-fi action adventure. Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn Quan Wang, an unhappy and overwhelmed laundromat owner, who is facing an audit from the IRS and the threat of losing everything to the tax man. Evelyn is married to Waymond Wang, (Ke Huy Quan), he is a calm, patient, meek and goofy husband. And together they are trying to bring up their daughter Joy Wang played by Stephanie Hsu. You may also recognise James Hong as Gong Gong, Evelyn's demanding father, who has just arrived from China. James Hong has been in more films than I can think of, and at 93 years old, is an absolute legend in the business.
The film is separated into 3 parts, Everything, Everywhere and All at Once, hence the name of the film.
The family are being audited, so go to the IRS building for a meeting with Deirdre Beaubeirdra, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. While on the way to the meeting, in the elevator Waymond's body is taken over by another version of Waymond, this Waymond is known as Alpha Waymond, as he comes from the Alpha Universe.
Alpha Waymond explains that many universes exist since every choice made creates a new universe. The people of the Alphaverse, led by the now deceased Alpha Evelyn, developed "universe-jumping" technology that allows people to access the skills, memories, and bodies of their parallel universe counterparts by fulfilling specific conditions, this may involve giving yourself paper cuts before activating the jump, or tapping a surface, just weird things that need to be done first, and a few rather hilarious ones too which I won't spoil. Alpha Waymond explains that the multiverse is being threatened by Jobu Tupaki, formerly Alpha Joy (Evelyn's daughter). Her mind was splintered after Alpha Evelyn pushed her to extensively verse-jump, leading her mind to overload and fracture across the multiverse. Jobu Tupaki now experiences all universes at once and can verse-jump and manipulate matter at will. With her godlike power she has created a black hole-like "everything bagel" that can potentially destroy the multiverse.
Evelyn is given verse-jumping technology to fight Jobu Tupaki's verse-jumping minions, who begin converging in the IRS building. Evelyn learns of Waymond's plans to divorce her and discovers other lives where she made different choices and flourished, such as by becoming a kung fu master and movie star instead of leaving China with Waymond, who becomes a successful businessman. Alpha Waymond comes to believe that Evelyn, as the greatest failure of all Evelyns of the multiverse, has the untapped potential to defeat Jobu Tupaki.
Some of the different universes are hilarious, I wont spoil them all, but I will say you will probably start seeing memes about hot dog fingers. There is even a universe where life never evolved. Yes really.
What follows is a true masterpiece of cinema, visual effects that should be in a film with 5 times the budget. A mixture of Chinese language and English, the viewer is taken on one hell of a ride.
This is undoubtable the film of the year, and will win all sorts of awards. We get short glimpses of the multiverse, some crazy, some downright absurd. This film will be compared to the new Doctor Strange film, but this film just does the whole genre so much better and more imaginative. If I was a Marvel exec watching this, I would be very pissed off, because Everything Everywhere All at Once is a better film. Simple as that.
The Good
What a ride. What an excellent imaginative film. Has something for everyone, and even some really cool Kung Fu scenes.
The Bad
There is a "fake" ending after about 90 minutes, and then the film carries on till about 2 hours 10. I thought the film overall was a little too long. I think a length between the fake ending and the real ending would have been better.
I loved this film, it is easily the superior "Multiverse" film of the year.
I score Everything Everywhere All at Once a nearly perfect 9.5/10
Watch it!
Out Now on Apple TV - https://apple.co/3MGlm1y
You can also pre-order the home entertainment release at - https://amzn.to/3GaVQiI
