Reviewed by Hunter Reagan ||
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once (EEAO) has all of the parallel universe action of this spring’s Marvel movie, Doctor Strange, with an even greater side of family drama. Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn Quan Wang, a poor laundromat owner who has little time for her family and even less for her hobbies. During an audit with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Evelyn is contacted by her husband from a parallel timeline and is forced to fight against a mysterious cult with the intent on destroying the multiverse.
On top of traversing realities to gain the skills of her parallel selves just to survive, Evelyn also has to contend with a husband that wants to divorce, a daughter that is growing distant and the fact that she is living her actual worst life in the multiverse. But does this timeline romp stack up to the Marvel powerhouse released just two months later? Today, I will review Everything Everywhere All at Once and share my thoughts on the film.
Beginning with the action, while EEAO has a slow beginning, it quickly picks up when Evelyn is attacked by an IRS agent, played by famous actor, Jamie Lee Curtis. While struggling to possess her alternate selves, Evelyn is then chased around the building by the cultist IRS agent as her universe-swapped husband protects her. Eventually, as Evelyn channels the kung-fu knowledge of another version of herself, she begins to kick butt as she continues to combat characters played by some of Hong Kong’s greatest movie stars. From flying kicks to pinky-finger punches, the show does not skimp on the fight choreography, or the comedy and it shows.
From there, Evelyn continues to master her control until she is swapping between sign-spinners and chefs to mow down her foes. However, she is not the only person able to seamlessly switch between versions as Jobu Tupaki, the leader of the cult intent on destroying the cosmos, embodies all versions of herself at once. Thus, while Jobu can attack with floppy pink dildos one second and turn people into piñatas the next, she can do so with even greater ability than Evelyn.
As a result, Evelyn is forced to continue swapping realities beyond her body’s limit, inching closer to the existential breakdown guaranteed by experiencing that many futures. The same insanity that created Jobu Tupaki, the only person to survive the process. Not only does this ticking time bomb create tension as Evelyn must win before she goes insane, but it also makes every sequential swap more impactful as it is one step closer to reaching Jobu Tapaki. In this fashion, the action never gets dull as each new swap brings an entirely different flavor of combat, and the looming threat of total annihilation or multiverse madness makes every loss feel like a punch in the gut.
Moving on to the character drama side of things, the movie shows it has real heart. Not a moment of downtime is squandered as Evelyn is confronted with divorce by her husband, strife with her lesbian daughter, and ashamed by her comparatively terrible life. Starting with her husband Waymond Wang, he has always been her soft-hearted supporter. Waymond encouraged Evelyn to move to the United States, to start the laundromat business and has always had her back.
However, Evelyn took his kindness for granted and optimism for naivete. As the bills started adding up, the business made less, and her dreams dwindled to dust, she began to resent Waymond. It’s clear Evelyn is frustrated by Waymond’s antics at the start of the movie, like his idea to put googly-eyes onto clothing and baking cookies for their IRS meeting. Evelyn sees it all as a waste of time, so she ignores Waymond’s opinions and rebukes him for it.
Even when it is revealed that Waymond is proposing divorce, Evelyn does not hear him out. Instead, Evelyn still sees Waymond as a nuisance, not the man she married, and cannot believe he would spring this on her. It was not until the end of the movie, when the IRS lady has the police called to repossess their business, does Evelyn realize Waymond’s strength. When Waymond begs the police and IRS agent to reconsider, they actually do. It is not because Waymond’s English is good, it is not because he is pathetic, but because he believes in the goodness of people and chooses to never give up. Charity like that is inscrutable to Evelyn, something she never could have imagined, and yet it is second nature to Waymond. That is when Evelyn realizes Waymond always had her back, through thick and thin, and that losing him would be worse than losing the entire universe.
Similarly, Evelyn reaches the same conclusion about her daughter Joy, but not without some difficulty. Joy’s an overweight teenage girl with romantic interests that do not align with Chinese traditional values, so initially her mother is overly critical. Just like how Evelyn treated Waymond, she primarily ignores Joy when it does not benefit her and even lies about Joy’s girlfriend to her own father, GoGo. In this way, Joy grows distant from Evelyn and begins to see herself as a failure.
Throughout the movie, the tension heightens between the two as not only does Evelyn have even less time to care about her daughter, but it also turns out that Jobu Tapaki is Joy from a different timeline. As a result, since Jobu inhabits all versions of herself, the conflict moves from a world-ending fight with a cult leader to a high-stakes disagreement between mother and daughter.
Joy believes everything is meaningless as she experiences every reality simultaneously and can never stay long enough to enact any change. What is the point in dying in one reality or murdering in the next when there are infinitely more to take their place? The undercurrent of this belief is Joy’s own feelings of inadequacy and hurt as Evelyn’s child. Joy is not especially talented, she is not confident in her image, and she certainly does not feel accepted for her sexuality. It all culminates into a want to no longer feel anything, so Joy decides to destroy the multiverse so she can finally die. When Evelyn eventually exceeds her limit, experiencing all realities at the same time as Joy, she even convinces herself that everything is pointless.
However, Evelyn is brought back to her senses by Waymond’s actions, realizing that there is an inherent good in people and that all it takes is for someone to believe in them. Thus, as the multiverse collapses and Joy tries to die, Evelyn hangs on to make sure she is not alone. The story ends with the family reconciling their differences after the universe is restored, with Evelyn recognizing that trust and love are more important than a succeeding business or a talented career. Evelyn no longer wishes for a different life, but for another chance at her own.
In the end, the story is shown for what it really is: a family drama. An impoverished household where a struggling matriarch cannot appreciate the moral character of her husband or see that she is pushing her hurting daughter towards suicide. All tied together with just a dash of absurdist science fiction and comedy to spice everything up. To conclude, both the action and drama of Everything Everywhere All at Once are superb, building off one another and combining to form a greater whole. There is no part that lags without a well-timed joke or a brawl that does not make you say “Wow!”.
As a result, I will give Everything Everywhere All at Once a 9/10 rating for being one of the best movies I have seen in years, and I would thoroughly encourage you all to watch it.
