REVIEW: Everything Everywhere All at Once is Weird in the Best Way Possible
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a movie that will leave you asking yourself, “What did I just watch”? Typically, for me, this happens when I have watched a movie where the directors and writers have decided to forgo the plot all together and focus on how many outlandish things they can cram into their movie before the end credits begin to role. This was not the case with Everything Everywhere All at Once because, despite all the weirdness, the movie never lost the plot.
Everything Everywhere All at Once opens with the movie’s protagonist, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) knee deep in business receipts as she prepares for her and her husband, Waymond’s (Ke Huy Quan) upcoming audit with the IRS. Evelyn is a no-nonsense woman, who only focuses on the important things. Those things being, keeping her and her husband’s laundromat afloat, impressing her father, and surviving their meeting with IRS auditor, Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). What she doesn’t have time for are the following, her daughter, Joy’s (Stephanie Hsu) antics, her marriage, and this person, who looks exactly like her husband, but is spewing crazy things about different universes and how she is the only one who can stop the nihilistic Jobu Tupak (Hsu), who strangely looks a lot like her daughter, from taking over the universes.
Written and directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, aka “The Daniels,” this story is filled with one weird thing after another. From the over-the-top outfits to the insane fight scenes, the amount of weird featured in the movie, on the surface, should have created a nonsensical movie. However, in the hands of The Daniels, it all makes sense. Every strange nuisance is well thought out and integrated in just the right way in order to help propel the story along. At no point does anything feel forced or out of place.
What The Daniels also do a great job utilizing is the movie’s score. Each piece of music used in the movie is used to help elevate scene rather than distract from it. From the beautiful pieces used to help bring emotion to the fight scenes to the delicate pieces used to help keep the focus on the dialogue, every pieces is will thought out.
Yeoh and Quan are flawless as the frustrated Evelyn and the kind-hearted Waymond. Watching the two navigate the different versions of Evelyn and Waymond not only shows off how talented the two are, but it also creates a fun time for the audience. Curtis plays a different role then people are used to seeing out of her in this movie as Deirdre, but she is just as amazing. She and Yeoh have great moments together throughout the movie. Rounding out the cast is Hsu, and she may be the standout in this movie. Hsu is asked to do a lot in this movie, and she gives it her all in every scene.
On the surface, Everything Everywhere All at Once shouldn’t work as a movie. But in the hands of The Daniels, audience goers are graced with a super weird, super fun movie that sheds a new light on a mother’s relationship with her daughter and a wife’s relationship with her husband.
Grade: A