Everything Everywhere All At Once is a film that leaves you with an endless amount of emotions that leaves one wondering their place and purpose. Writer-Directors  Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert are known as the Daniels. They have brought forth a particularly rare and valid vision to life. With films like Ready Player One and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the cinema has been moving in different directions. The Daniels will take you down Alice’s rabbit hole in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Tunneling through a spyglass of comedy, philosophy, the foundation of human emotions splashed with a dose of Kung-Fu. In other words, a complete tripped out mindfuck, with a heavy emphasis on tripped out.

Michele Yeoh Brings Her Best Performance To Date As Evelyn

Michelle Yeoh, the protagonist of the film, performs an absolute love letter cinematic silver screen, as Evelyn Wang. Evelyn Wang, the proprietor of a laundromat facing an Internal Revenue Service audit. We meet her enjoying a happy moment with Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) and their daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu).

We see their beaming faces reflected in the mirror on their living room wall. As the camera zooms through the mirror, Evelyn’s smile fades, now sitting at a desk awash with business receipts. She is preparing to handle a meeting with an IRS auditor. While trying to serve a Chinese food feast for their Chinese New Year celebration.

Gong Gong’s (James Hong, glorious as ever) lofty expectations of his daughter are very high. On top of the to-do list of taking care of her father’s visit and the tax audit.

Evelyn’s sullen daughter Joy wants to bring her friend Becky (Tallie Medel) to the party, and her husband wants to talk about the state of their marriage.

Evelyn Wang Discovers The Overwhelming Power Of Everything Everywhere All At Once

Just as Evelyn begins to feel overwhelmed by everything happening in her life. She’s visited by another version of Waymond from what he calls the Alpha verse. There, humans have learned how to reverse chronological time and are threatened by a monster depicted as Jobu Tupaki.

Evelyn is then thrown headlong into a multiverse adventure that forces her to question everything she thought she knew regarding her existence.

Everything from her failures, to her wishes for her family. Most of the action takes place at an IRS office in Simi Valley, California.

This is where Evelyn must battle IRS agent Diedre (Jamie Lee Curtis, having a ball), hordes of security guards, and everyone else she’s ever met.

Production designer Jason Kisvarday constructs an endless cubicle arrangement where everything from the editor’s blade to a butt plug-shaped auditor of the year award can become a catalyst of sorts in a struggle to save the universe. The original speed of the script was equaled without breaking the editor’s direction. All by simply expanding Evelyn’s inner journey while various layers of universes folded into each other. Anticipated cuts held the scenes together, while snap cuts played up the prominent aspects of the story’s comical foundation.

Defined both ways and not, each realm looks and acts in a unique way. Serving as a worldview analogue, the winking film irony relates from “The Matrix” to “The Fall” to “2001: A Space Odyssey” to “In The Mood For Love” to “Ratatouille.” Even the performer’s own legacy makes a cameo appearance in the film with the use of loving callbacks to her Hong Kong action film days and the wuxia classic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” Even Michelle Yeoh’s own legacy makes a cameo appearance in the film. With the use of loving callbacks to her Hong Kong action film days and the wuxia classic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The fight sequences, choreographed by Andy and Brian Le, have a balletic beauty to them. They are well-executed from the perspective of cinematographer Larkin Seiple with much wide shot framing allowing the body to fill the frame.

Michelle Yeoh plays the lead role that showcases her distinctive talents Everything from her seasoned martial arts ability to her fantastically comic timing to her capability to delve into unfathomable cultural depths of reason simply from a look or a reaction. She is a movie star, and this is a film that recognizes it.

Ke Huy Quan Delivers As A Love Stricken Benefactor

Much like Evelyn utilizes Yeoh’s artwork, elements of Waymond can be found throughout Quan’s distinct career path. The comic timing from his childhood parts as Data in “The Goonies” and Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” echoes in the role.

His work as a fight coordinator is evident in the tight action of alpha-Fightstar. Who is able to take out a truckload of intruders with a fanny pack. Even his time as a production assistant, like for Wong Kar Wai’s “2046”, can be drawn from the universe in which he plays the role of the one who got away with a suave stance.

Quan utilizes his comedic talent to deliver a gentle reminder that an individual is a vital strength in kindness. Proving that nice guy may finish last but they will suffer through the pain for the greater good. A very relatable topic for me TBH.

Stephanie Hsu, Depicts Evelyns Daughter Joy As A Broken Soul

While Evelyn’s and Waymond’s apathy with each other flows through alternative realities, it is their daughter Joy who proves to be the villian. In a clear victory for actress Stephanie Hsu, Joy delivers a generational contrast. Joy is the lasting weight of Evelyn’s fractured bond with her grandfather and the frustration of an American dream unattained. The color of her individual sexuality was in stark contrast to that of her mother’s country when she first arrived there. The story of Eveyln’s struggle is worsened by everything that she did to give up more opportunities for a better life than what was concluded. Owing to these pressures, she manifests a state of great rebellion that threatened even the universe the consumption of everything bagels threatens to swallow up everyone and everything.

When remembering loved ones who have suffered from generational trauma. Daniels’s perspective is that the void can be reversed through the experience of absolute love that is transmitted from one generation to the next. Only if we make sure to focus on love and tolerance rather than condemnation and rejection.

Life isn’t always a series of rational moments; it’s a series of fleeting, priceless, and magical moments. Sometimes they appear one by one and sometimes they are Everything Everywhere All At Once. This film is about choosing love no matter what. Even at the fate of the multiverse. It frequently visits the notion of how easy it is in life to let the past shape our future. Yielding two perspectives, one being “nothing really matters” and “nothing else matters”. It is a poem of our existence and presence, and the complete contrast of it. It often reminded me of the rabbit hole of an ego-death LSD trip into our purpose in life. I do believe I discovered my new favorite movie. The Daniels, Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and the icon Jamie Lee Curtis truly came together to make this masterpiece. Everything Everywhere All At Once Don’t be surprised to see it nominated for a variety of awards in the future.