I’m just gonna say it: Everything Everywhere All at Once, the latest from indie darling studio A24, is the weirdest movie I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s so bonkers, so off the wall, so insane that it makes “Alice in Wonderland,” “Mandy” and “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” look like fact based dramas. Simply describing this film to someone who hasn’t seen it feels like you’re giving a play-by-play of the world’s worst fever dream, prompting anyone who hears it to immediately send you to a padded room.
And yet, it’s so crazy, that honestly, I respect it. The phrase, “Like nothing you’ve ever seen before” has been trotted around over the years, but it’s truly perfect to describe this strange, strange film. Only A24 could’ve made this film and the sheer level of originality and anything-goes mandate on display here is all but unrivaled.
In the simplest terms I can describe this film in, ostensibly, the story is about Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”), an Asian-American immigrant struggling to maintain a decrepit laundromat with her long suffering husband and daughter. The first twenty minutes are by A24 standards deceptively tame and very quickly establish Evelyn’s troubles and place the viewer in her shoes.
From there, it gets batcrap crazy. Without giving too much away, the story, divided into three parts- “Everything,” “Everywhere” and “All at Once”- delves into the concept of the multiverse in a truly unique fashion, with characters leaping between realities much like Neo did in “The Matrix”- but of course, the method by which they do this is far more bizarre. Along the way, there’s martial arts showdowns, hot dog fingers, talking raccoons and a plot device centered around a bagel that literally has everything in the entire universe on it.
Directed and written by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who made the equally bizarre “Swiss Army Man,” and produced by Anthony and Joe Russo of “Avengers: Endgame” fame, Everything Everywhere All at Once certainly lives up to the title. The creative team has left nothing on the table here and it seems that no idea was too insane for these filmmakers. The imagery that Kwan and Scheinert have created here will be burned into my brain for a long time, most notably the strangest fight sequences ever put to film and a silent scene in which two static rocks give the performances of the year.
But even through all this, there’s a solid story here with compelling characters. Yeoh as Evelyn earns our sympathy as an audience; she’s overworked and trying to balance an IRS audit with a teenage daughter recently out of the closet, and she’s our anchor through everything that happens. Yeoh gives her best performance since “Crazy Rich Asians” and proves that she hasn’t missed a trick since “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” twenty years ago. Ke Huy Quan makes a triumphant return to acting after “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” back in 1984 and gets a chance to showcase dramatic chops this time around. But it’s Stephanie Hsu who steals the show, with a character who the less said about the better, and will likely be the one you’ll think about most after the credits roll.
Without question, this film is wholly unique and quite possibly the riskiest film ever made. Much like “Being John Malkovich” before it, it’s a piece of cinema that stands apart from the crowd, for better or worse. It’s the kind of film A24 was made for, and hopefully, it will be a beacon for other risks to be taken in the field. Kwan and Scheinert clearly had a vision here and from what I can tell, no one said no to that vision, which is refreshing even if the end result might not jive with everyone.
If all this hasn’t scared you off, by all means, go see Everything Everywhere All at Once. It deserves to be experienced at least once, maybe twice once the initial shock has worn off, and you’ll likely be talking about it for years to come. So long as you’re prepared for the trippiest of all trips.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is now playing in theaters.