Everything Everywhere All At Once
Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Hsu, Tallie Medel, James Hong
Time: 2h 19min
Ratings: ★★★★
My daughter told me she cried watching Everything Everywhere All At Once. And, after watching it myself, I can understand why she did that. Not just because the movie is a little sad in itself, but also because I realized she thinks I’m Evelyn Wang, the often clueless main character mom in EEAAO.
Some time ago, I went into my daughter’s Facebook account just to check out what she had been up to, and found that she was a member of the group, Daughters of Tiger Moms. Wow, fancy that, I’m a Tiger Mom. But teaching her basic good values like study hard so that she could get into a good college, and subsequently, get a good job shouldn’t be lumped together with the harsh, highly controlling and unemotional parenting style of Tiger Moms.
But, I digress.
Evelyn (Yeoh) is having a horrible day. Her laundromat business is being audited by the IRS and she has an appointment with the very disagreeable Agent Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Curtis). And in the midst of that, her husband Waymond (Quan) is looking to divorce her; her very disapproving and demanding dad (a Tiger Dad, perhaps?), played by the legendary Hong is visiting; and her gay daughter Joy (Hsu) wants to introduce her girlfriend Becky (Medel) to, heaven forbid, Grandpa. To top it off, Waymond is acting strangely and wants her to save the world.
What’s Evelyn to do? In the course of a day or two, Evelyn learns to jump between multiverses, fight baddie jumpers, say arch-villain Jobu Tupaki’s name correctly, and solves everyone’s inner conflicts. Most importantly, Evelyn learns that she needs to save herself to save the world.
So, the writers/directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, a.k.a. Daniels, in an effort to appeal to the masses, have come up with an everything bagel of a movie. Drama? Definitely. Action? Absolutely. Comedy? You betcha. Gags? Gotta have them. Sci-fi? For sure. Social commentary? Bring it on. But just like how sometimes the everything bagel can give you an indigestion, this movie can make your head spin trying to play plot catch-up, and dealing with the special effects and the lickety-split camera angles cutting back-and-forth. EEAAO is massive and messy, to say the least. But that’s how the Daniels desire it, and if the title doesn’t tell you anything already, the characters drop hints all over the movie to warn you about it.
Still, you plow on. Because, despite the chaos and sometimes cringeworthy dialogue, there’s just something about each character that makes you root for them. Everybody sees something of themselves in Evelyn, in Waymond, in Joy, in Gong Gong (Grandpa), in Becky, even in Agent Deirdre. The characters are so much bigger than the universe, and made all the more better with some genius casting.
Yeoh, whose previous roles mostly involve kungfu and kicking ass, is really venturing out of her depths here – and succeeds famously – as a mom who’s in need of some serious self-reckoning. Her Best Actress Oscar win here last year is definitely well-deserved. By the way, if you find Yeoh’s Asian-American accent strange, that’s because she channels her Malaysian-English speak, which endears her further to her legion of fans from her home country.
Acting accolades also go to the rest of the cast. Hsu excels in her performance, embodying evil with lips-smacking glee and good with vulnerability. Curtis is a joy to watch as she transforms from her more famous roles as femme fatales to your textbook government bureaucrat that comes complete with cookie crumbs and Pepto-Bismol. Her scenes are definitely something to look forward to in the movie, and which garner her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
Quan is memorable as the much misunderstood husband and googly-eyed optimist, complete with his Steve-from-Blues-Clues outfit. He gets all the good, funny lines here, and it just goes to show that all an actor needs to bounce back and show their full potential is a good role. It may have taken him almost 40 years, but Quan has certainly come a long way from his days as Data in The Goonies to become an Alpha and win his Best Supporting Actor Oscar here.
Like the Alphaverse that has come a long way in search of a hero who could save them, viewers have also waited for a long time for a movie like this to come along to wake us up to wonder about life beyond our universe. Nah… not really! But EEAAO is a wake-up call for us to examine our relationships with each other, family or otherwise. And for this alone, the movie deserves its Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay Oscars. By the way, my husband didn’t cry watching it. So, I’ll take that as a good sign.
(Photo courtesy of A24)