Movie Review: Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) has a miserable life. She’s married to a husband named Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) who wants to divorce her but hasn’t told her yet. Their daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is alienated and rebellious; she has a girlfriend and tattoos, both frowned on by her mother. The family lives above their coin-op laundromat, which has the usual problems–crowding, unreliable machinery, and occasionally difficult customers. Evelyn’s father (James Hong) had an accident in China and has come to live with them, though he is very old-fashioned and high-maintenance. He never approved of Eveyln and Waymond’s young romance. They had run away to America to be married. If all that wasn’t bad enough, they are being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. 

As they go to the local IRS office to explain their case to Ms. Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), things get weird. Her husband starts acting very strange and tells her that she needs to do some completely random things. Then he stops acting strange and is back to his nebbish self. She does the strange things, only to discover that Waymond’s other persona was from a different universe. In that universe, a person called Jobu Tupaki is trying to destroy all of the universes. The story unfolds in chaotic and interesting ways from there, as Evelyn learns to access the skills of her other selves from other universes to fight the good fight against the baddie.

The mechanics of the action is a bit bonkers. Since the characters can access a multiverse of other selves, most anything is imaginable and is used. There’s almost too much to keep track of–finding the right spot between creative license and overwhelming chaos is tough. The filmmakers manage the situation very well.

The story is really focused on the human relationships at the center–the wife and husband, the mother and daughter. Those two relationships are damaged to the point of breaking at the beginning of the movie. Lack of communication and sincerity have caused the problems. By a weird transformance, the fight to save the many universes leads to a solution for Evelyn’s problems in her life. She learns more about herself and her family as she experiences other versions of herself, her life, and her loved ones. The movie ends on a surprisingly touching and grounded note after nearly embracing nihilism.

Recommended.