As its title might imply, it’s tough to sum up Everything Everywhere All at Once. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the duo behind the equally baffling Swiss Army Man, specialize in weird projects that defy straightforward explanation. But it will likely not surprise fans of the pair that gave us The Surprisingly Earnest Farting Corpse Movie to learn that this stunning new film, too, asks a deceptively juvenile question: “What if Chekhov’s gun were a butt plug?”
Part martial-arts thriller, part heartfelt family drama, and part searing indictment of the banal subjugation of the IRS, Everything Everywhere All at Once—which debuted at SXSW Friday and is set for wide release on March 25—revels in contradiction.
Perennial superstar Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn, a woman defined by calcified disappointment. She rolls her eyes at her husband, whose cheerful nature and habit of putting googly eyes on various objects around the failing laundromat they own she writes off as silly. Her daughter is an aimless dropout and she can never please her father. And to top it all off, her business is getting audited.
As if these problems weren’t enough, Evelyn now faces a much bigger task: saving the multiverse. She must learn to ricochet from one timeline to another, embodying all of her various selves and using their skills, to save existence from a terrifying entity unstuck in time and space. The mechanics of how this all works are best left for viewers to find out, but suffice to say that it involves Bluetooth headsets and strange acts like snorting a fly or impaling oneself on a trophy that happens to be shaped like a... well, anyway, it’s best to just let you see how it all plays out.
And so the fate of capital-“E” “Everything” rests on the exhausted shoulders of a woman who considers herself a disappointment. But the absence of success is potential, if one can only learn to actually see it.
Kwan and Scheinert, collectively known as “Daniels,” were best known for their music videos until their feature debut, Swiss Army Man, inspired awe and consternation at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016. (Some audience members walked out during the film; those who remained until the end gave it a standing ovation.) The two also once collaborated on an interactive short film with an incomprehensible number of possible outcomes, aptly titled “Possibilia.”
Duality is a cornerstone of these directors’ work, which styles itself as delightfully unsubtle while (subtly!) using playground humor and off-the-wall gags as vehicles for existential commentary. Case in point: Swiss Army Man is at once The Daniel Radcliffe Farting Corpse Movie and a deeply moving exploration of the human condition—the beautiful, the painful, and the just plain weird.
Awe permeates these directors’ work, which consistently rejects cynicism for the kind of earnestness that would be easy to mock, were it not executed so articulately—and through gags like turning Michelle Yeoh into, at various points, a piñata, a hot dog-fingered lesbian, and a talking rock.
Yeoh, by the way, is just one of several heavy hitters in this ensemble. The legendary James Hong plays her father, while Ke Huy Quan—perhaps best known until now as Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Data from the Goonies—delivers a jaw-dropping performance as her husband, Waymond. (Come for the immaculate martial-arts scene he executes with a fanny pack as a weapon, and stay for the emotional revelation his character delivers by film’s end.)
And if there’s any justice in this world, Everything Everywhere All at Once will become a star-making vehicle for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel actress Stephanie Hsu, who is alternately heartbreaking and hilarious as Evelyn’s ironically named daughter, Joy. (Give this movie a Best Costume Oscar nod for her multiverse-hopping alter ego’s space-age-pop-star-inspired outfits alone, honestly!) Oh, and did I mention that Jamie Lee Curtis plays the film’s villainous IRS agent?
These performances unfold in an immaculately shot world replete with visual treats. Just like the clutter in Evelyn’s psyche, each shot feels packed with details one might revisit again and again, like an I Spy book. The martial arts scenes, especially, are both razor sharp in their precision and gorgeously complex in their choreography.
And then there’s the dialogue, which comes replete with shreds of ephemera that defy interpretation—as seen in one moment when a character speaks in lyrics from the inescapable early-aughts hit “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” with an unfailingly straight face.
Stephanie Hsu, Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All at Once
A24Clocking in at just under two and a half hours, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a little plot-heavy—but it does the thematic work to back up that runtime. While Swiss Army Man explored themes of delusion, self- loathing, and, ultimately, self-love—especially within the context of queerness—this film feels inextricably tied to the immigrant experience and generational trauma. Evelyn has learned certain rules of behavior, both from her emotionally withholding father and a society that loves to remind her that she is the “other”—and although they cause her great pain, she can’t seem to stop herself from imposing the same restrictions and insecurities on her daughter. The result brings us back to some of the same existential pitfalls that fascinate Swiss Army Man—alienation, dissociation, and suicidality. At every turn, Evelyn must reconcile her sense of what things should be with what they are; either the world is fucked up, or she is.
Or perhaps, the film proposes, both could be true. Might it be freeing to consider the possibility that the universe is a giant, incomprehensible mess just like the rest of us? In the absence of real meaning, maybe we can create our own.
