Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
*surprisingly, I didn't spoil much at all*
I am not a writer. I wanted to make that clear. Sure, I wrote papers in undergrad as an economics major, I wrote to pass a class, I wrote for a grade, for a letter on a page. But academic writing disallows creativity. It disallowed the use of “I” and “me” and “you.” There is nothing personal about academia, you have to prove your point while being totally removed from your work. There cannot and shall not be a person behind the proof, the proof is the meaning, the proof is God, and the person is obsolete, the person does not exist. I hated writing, I always told people that. I would rather take an exam and prove myself through multiple choice and short answers rather than pour my heart out to a page that doesn’t believe in me, refuses to believe in me. Alas, here I am, ripping my heart out of my chest and exploding it onto this page. I have discovered that this is what writing is supposed to be: creative, ruleless, borderless, whatever I want it to be. I am not a writer, but this is writing.
The movie this week is quite the romp. I laughed, I cried. I was planning on going to the movie theatre alone (which is one of my favorite activities), but on a whim I decided to ask my friend who loves to consume media as much as I do, and she said yes. We ate Indian food in the parking lot and gossiped until it was time to enter, we got some candy and we settled in for an absolute treat. After it ended we turned to each other to dissect what we had witnessed, and she made the comment that it was very long, with a 132 minute runtime. It was very long, I concurred, but we both agreed that everything tied together. There are absolutely no red herrings, no loose ends throughout the film, which is rare for such a complex movie.
Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (the directors of Swiss Army Man [2016] with Daniel Radcliffe, which is also quite the treat), Everything Everywhere All at Once follows Evelyn Wang (played by the beautiful and talented Michelle Yeoh), a middle aged Chinese immigrant who trying to deal with her laundromat business being audited, while also dealing with being a wife, a daughter, and a mother at the same time. She watches a romantic tv musical, giving her a minute of solace and longing. We see that she is totally unhappy and overwhelmed with her life, but she tries to keep it together as much as possible. It was so refreshing to see a middle aged woman as a main character in a story, who is imperfect, who makes mistakes, but also is very complex and relatable character. Michelle Yeoh absolutely kills this role, as she did in the only other movie I’ve seen her in, Memoirs of a Geisha (2005).
The movie completely shifts when Evelyn, her husband Waymond (played by Ke Huy Quan, famous for playing Data in The Goonies [1985]), and her father (played by the incredible James Hong) go to the IRS office to resubmit their taxes to none other than Jamie Lee Curtis’s character, Deirdre. Waymond twitches, he shifts into someone completely different, to tell Evelyn to switch her shoes to the wrong feet and meet him in the janitor’s closet. Evelyn is transported to the multiverse, where Waymond who is not Waymond explains that she is the chosen one and she needs to save everyone’s universe from the evil Jobu Tobaki. Jobu has learned everything and experienced every life she could experience, and she wants everyone to do the same and feel what she feels and be miserable like her. To defeat her, Evelyn becomes all knowing just like Jobu. Surprise: Jobu Tobaki is Evelyn’s daughter (or looks exactly like her), Joy Wang. Joy is played by the funny and gorgeous Stephanie Hsu. I knew Hsu from her role on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017- ), where I believe her talent is stifled, almost completely flattened. This film proved to me that she is a capable and incredibly talented actress. She needs to drop Maisel and start something where she can absolutely kill it. There’s a scene where Hsu’s Jobu Tobaki beats a man to death with two 24-inch long dildos. She is amazing.
This movie is ultimately about intergenerational trauma. Evelyn’s father was never proud of her, never said he loved her, never cared enough to stop her from ruining her life. In turn, Evelyn does not appreciate her husband for sticking by her side throughout their tumultuous life immigrating to the United States, and dealing with a failing business. Evelyn also does not hear her daughter, does not listen to her, does not try to understand her pain even though Joy tries every single day to tell her. Did I mention Joy is gay? Evelyn cannot seem to get over this factor in her daughter’s life, which prompts Jobu to say, “You’re still hung up on me liking girls in this universe?!” It is insignificant, and for all of the insane things that Evelyn experiences, she eventually gets over her fear of her daughter’s sexuality. I cried when Joy was about to leave her family forever and Evelyn steps in and delivers an absolutely heartwarming, emotional, beautiful monologue to her daughter.
In an effort to be concise, and to conceal the greater parts of this movie, I will not give away too much about the climax and inciting events of this film. The action is absolutely beyond anything I could have expected, and makes this such a fun time. It is an absolutely outrageous experience. If you want to see Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis with hot dogs for fingers, but also have revelations about your own life with your own family, I highly recommend this movie. It is fun through and through, even with its emotional bits. It may be long, but it is 100% worth the ride. Anyone and everyone will find something they enjoy in this film. 9/10, with most of the points going to the costume designer!