An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save the world by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led.
In a sense, it’s hard to know what to do with a movie like “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” composed as it is of part comedy, part family drama, part martial arts extravaganza, but most of all, big part head trip. While it’s a film with a message, the dispatch comes in the form of a series of wild rides across what’s called the multiverse.
Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn, a wife, and mother, living above a failing laundromat, struggling to get by. Her wimpy husband (Ke Huy Quan) believes that his wife is dissatisfied with him and the meager life they have built – going so far as to have divorce papers drawn up. But even as he tries to serve them, Evelyn maintains she is very busy – “no time to wait,” she says repeatedly.
Evelyn and her family are prepping for an unpleasant meeting with an IRS auditor named Deirdre Beaubeirdra, played by a self-deprecating Jamie Lee Curtis. Beaubeirdra sits inside her low-rise cubicle – a frumpy, shabbily dressed bureaucrat with a pageboy haircut, most unhappy with Evelyn’s recordkeeping and the plethora of unrelated business receipts. Like the other characters, she undergoes a transformation as the plot develops, eventually morphing into a big-hearted soul who sympathizes with Evelyn’s predicaments.
Stephanie Hsu plays Joy, Evelyn’s disaffected daughter, resentful of her mother’s constant nagging – whether about her weight, her sexual orientation, or any number of other perceived flaws. This oft-told theme of mother-daughter conflict lands center stage in this production as it seeks to impart insight into notions of female bonding and feminine worth.
James Hong – a supporting actor with a familiar and welcome presence – plays Evelyn’s father. He lives with the family and is as critical of Evelyn as she is of her own daughter. When Evelyn is delivered at the hospital, the doctor apologizes because their new baby is a girl. In flashbacks, when Evelyn leaves home, her parents hardly protest at all.
Relatively quickly after the opening credits and without warning, Evelyn is contacted by a different version of her husband – far from the meek and timid one she has known since their courtship. This new guy radiates charisma and self-assurance as he explains that he has come from another universe to help Evelyn find herself and save the world.
Inside a mobile control room with three operators, we learn that the protagonists are given the ability to jump from one universe to another, each exceedingly different. A smartphone device displays the network – gateways to alternate universes and alternate lives, where the characters are the same, but the circumstances of their lives, or even their physical evolution, differs markedly from the current reality.
The many possible lives that Evelyn could have led flash across the screen in sequences of rapid cuts – like a live-action version of the hallucination-driven illustrations by Peter Max. The point is made – that Evelyn, like each of us, can live any number of different futures based on the choice we make in the present moment.
As it turns out, Joy’s version of rebelling reveals her as something akin to a master of the universe, where she can see all of the possibilities and outcomes that her mother cannot. Over the course of the film, and after many jumps to many alternative realities, Evelyn becomes enlightened as well. It is only after her own epiphany that she can see through her daughter’s plight, sowing the seeds for reconciliation.
The remainder of the cast constitutes a motley ensemble of enforcers of the status quo, all experts in the martial arts and who never miss the opportunity to show off their fighting skills. However, even their menacing demeanors finally succumb to Evelyn’s revelations.
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” represents an absurdist approach to moviemaking that may be hard to follow at first, but is nonetheless a tale told with a verve that never bores. Written and directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, one can only wonder how many psilocybin mushroom teas, peyote buttons, or other psychedelics the two consumed in the course of conceiving and crafting this mind-bender of a narrative. If nothing else, the generous, unrelenting humor will keep audiences in stitches.
At the end of the day, this is a film about a mother reconnecting with her daughter, both of whom manage to transcend each other’s persistent and petty criticisms, though not without a fair amount of drama en route. Not just that, but together with the rest of the family, they also manage to save the universe in the process.
In Select Theaters Friday, March 25th, and Nationwide Friday, April 8th
