A movie like ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ has never existed before | SXSW review

In Everything Everywhere All At Once, an unremarkable Chinese-American woman finds out that the fate of the multiverse lies in her (and her other versions) hands.

Everything Everywhere All At Once may be one of the most accurate movie titles in history. Filmmaking duo Daniels (Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert) throw everything, kitchen sink and all, into their action-thriller-comedy romp through their version of the multiverse — like the silly fever dream ideas of every person in existence brought to life in insanely colorful detail. The movie is so jam-packed that its cinematic references range from Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey to Pixar’s animated Ratatouille to Wong Kar-wai’s arthouse romance In the Mood For Love. And these aren’t just throwaway references. Each movie is woven inseparably into the plot.

That’s not to say it’s unfocused either. The movie’s story, for as complex as the lore gets, is relatively straightforward and it earns nearly every one of its digressions — yes, even the thread about humans with hot dogs for fingers and the universe where humans never evolved and are simply insentient rocks that communicate in subtitles. I’m telling you, this movie is one of a kind. But, as we know, bizarreness doesn’t necessarily make a good movie — though it certainly makes for an entertaining one. It’s how Daniels use the bizarreness to tell their story that makes it great.

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Evelyn is a Chinese-American immigrant who, along with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), owns a laundromat that she works hard to run, albeit robotically. After years on the grind she’s simply going through the motions, something that has distanced her from her husband and daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu). It’s not even that she’s unhappy with her life — she’s simply not living it. She has one problem though: she hasn’t paid her taxes. That leads Evelyn, Waymond and her father Gong Gong (James Hong) to the IRS where inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis) performs an audit of their business.

But like anyone trying to pay their taxes, things quickly go awry.

In a bit of a exposition dump that blessedly make the concept of the multiverse easy-to-follow, Waymond, or at least another version of Waymond from a different universe called the Alpha-verse, inhabits the body of… this universe’s Waymond (okay, maybe it’s not that easy to follow, but the Daniels find ways to guide you through it) and explains to Evelyn that every decision you make splits off a new universe and different version of you and your life. That means there are millions of versions of Evelyns and Waymonds. Alpha-verse Waymond explains that in his universe Evelyn created a technology that gives them the ability to jump across the multiverse into different versions of themselves.

He seeked out this universe’s Evelyn to recruit her to help defeat the evil inter-dimensional Jobu Tupaki, another version of Joy who wants to destroy the multiverse, by teaching her how to shift between different versions of herself to access their abilities. In perhaps the most impressive fight scene of the many impressive fight scenes in the movie, Evelyn shifts into a version of herself who broke up with Waymond before they could get married and instead became a martial arts master and subsequently a successful actress — yes, it’s as meta as it sounds — and fights a version of Deidre who is a pro-wrestler. Yes, Jamie Lee Curtis gets in on the action too.

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Like The Matrix where Evelyn is Neo and Waymond is Morpheus, she must try to master the ability to jump between versions and prevent Jobu Tupaki from taking over her universe. In the process we see movie star Evelyn (an homage to In the Mood for Love), sign spinner Evelyn, and hibachi chef Evelyn which features the movie’s funniest references to Ratatouille and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Underneath all the absurdity, though, is a well-realized exploration of the Asian and Asian-American experiences. Coming into the movie, I didn’t expect to be taken so emotionally by the movie’s deeper themes as the son of Asian immigrants. The experience of generational trauma takes form in Evelyn and Joy’s relationship — one strained by her mother’s desire to hold onto her vision of what Joy’s life should be, which is fueled by Evelyn’s father’s vision of what her life should be. The parent-child relationship has become a focus of movies lately. Perhaps because the millennial generation is now watching their boomer parents reach the later years of their lives. Daniels explore the tension of how one generation’s regrets, trauma, dreams bleed into the next but are often rejected because each generation is born into a different world.

To try to write about Everything Everywhere All At Once is like trying to explain the dream you had last night. The details are outlandish, maybe a little fuzzy, sometimes terrifying, but often connected to something in your subconscious. Some thought or insecurity or desire deep down that is suppressed deep in your psyche for one reason or another. On its face, Everything Everywhere is a wickedly entertaining, high-octane action romp that is destined for instant cult classic status. But it has more on its mind than hot dog hands, butt plugs and world-ending everything bagels — not just more. Everything.

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Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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