Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Directed by Daniel Scheinert
An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save what's important to her by connecting with the lives she could have led in other universes.
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That’s also nothing compared to the gonzo greatness Michelle Yeoh gets to indulge in once she is encouraged (in a sequence that gleefully pays homage to The Matrix) to tap into her alternate versions, as Everything Everywhere All at Once boasts numerous sublime martial arts sequences shot by Larkin Seiple where just about everything but the kitchen sink becomes a weapon.
And by blending hard-hitting science fiction action with philosophical musings about the nature of existence, "Everything Everywhere All at Once" can't help but feel like "The Matrix" for the post-Trump era.
Charmingly, a lot of these adventures seem to hark back to various late-’90s antecedents: Like Neo in “The Matrix,” Evelyn is a messiah-in-training who must learn to absorb powerful fighting techniques in the trippiest possible way.
In Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s bold and boundless, nihilist multiverse spectacle, the co-directors known as the Daniels gleefully reference “The Matrix,” “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and the works of Wong Kar-wai to give the legendary Michelle Yeoh her most demanding, and possibly most fulfilling role, yet.
Without a breath’s hesitation, they start to explore the outer limits of the universe through whiplash-inducing montages, while peppering in a generous number of references to classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix and various Wong Kar-wai films.
The parallels to a thousand other things, from Cloud Atlas to The Matrix to Douglas Adams (AC Weisbecker’s 1986 book, Cosmic Banditos , arguably the funniest book ever written about quantum physics, also deserves mention here), are obvious, and the casting alone should give you some sense of the pop culture stunt the Daniels are trying to pull off.
Once again, I won’t give away individual surprises, except to praise a dynamite homage to Ratatouille , as well as some references to Yeoh’s own screen persona, and the quoting of a certain obscure pop song from the early 2000s.
But amidst a raccoon parody of Ratatouille (which is hilarious every single time), to a universe where evolution took a sharp turn and now everyone has hot dogs for fingers, to the Wong Kar-Wai inspired universe where Evelyn is a movie star like the actress playing her, there is a real story about acceptance and growth and healing.
The payoffs for Evelyn misremembering the concept of Ratatouille , for a universe in which everyone has hot-dog fingers, and the sentient-rock conversation would be more effective if one of them were snipped.
The ideal audience member is one who laughs shamelessly at pantless martial-arts goons wearing butt-plugs, but also sighs in delight at the woozy Wong Kar-Wai homage that appears between the Ratatouille -but-racoons universe and the universe where Evelyn is a rock.
My favorite universe stems from a verbal misunderstanding and ultimately nods to Pixar’s Ratatouille (2007), with a teppanyaki chef that hides a rodent named Racaccoonie under his hat.
Daniels stuffs the frame with flashes of memory, paying homage to different genres and mimicking specific film aesthetics; the directors hop from stop-motion animation to wuxia to a breathtaking re-creation of Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love .
One of them became a Hong Kong action star after denying Waymond’s marriage proposal, and now yearns for the man who got away in a rainswept alley that’s soaked with “In the Mood for Love” ambiance and shot with flashes of Wong Kar-Wai’s signature step-printing technique (Yeoh channels Maggie Cheung, and Quan makes for a dashing Tony Leung stand-in).
In one universe, Waymond appears as a version of Tony Leung in scenes inspired by Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000), complete with blurry slow-mo and green-hued streets.
Meanwhile, film lovers will spot easter eggs to films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey , In the Mood For Love , Ratatouille , and more.
So, that means there is a timeline where Evelyn decides not to leave home as a young woman, move to America, and start a laundromat, and instead she becomes an international film star whose career very much resembles Michelle Yeoh’s and lives in an world that looks like Wong Kar-wai’s In The Mood For Love.
He gets to show off all sorts of skill sets as the various Waymonds — one of the more melancholy timelines mimics a Wong Kar Wai movie, complete with him and Yeoh dreamily decked out like Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Maggie Cheung in “In the Mood for Love” — but Quan’s most appealing incarnation is as the gallantly goofy husband of our own beleaguered universe, whose relentlessly sunny disposition seems dippy and dull-witted at first, but is revealed to be an act of defiance against the gloom-and-doom of a grindingly downbeat world.
Equally revelatory is Quan, the erstwhile child star of "The Goonies" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" who retired from acting over the lack of opportunities for Asian Americans but returned after being inspired by "Crazy Rich Asians" (which also featured Yeoh).
The former child actor who once played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Data in The Goonies —two seminal and legendarily problematic roles that helped define Asian representation for Gen-X audiences—ends up being the most inspired casting choice of the year.
He is best known for his child roles in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies , except he quit acting until Crazy Rich Asians convinced him to consider trying again.
Quan is also a delight to watch: Gen X kids will appreciate the young star of “The Goonies” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” in such a multifaceted, impressive comeback of sorts.
But it’s hard to fault a movie that shows such heart, or one that reunites audiences with Quan, whom you may remember as Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom , or Data from The Goonies .
The legendary James Hong plays her father, while Ke Huy Quan—perhaps best known until now as Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Data from the Goonies —delivers a jaw-dropping performance as her husband, Waymond.
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In Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s bold and boundless, nihilist multiverse spectacle, the co-directors known as the Daniels gleefully reference “The Matrix,” “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and the works of Wong Kar-wai to give the legendary Michelle Yeoh her most demanding, and possibly most fulfilling role, yet.
Without a breath’s hesitation, they start to explore the outer limits of the universe through whiplash-inducing montages, while peppering in a generous number of references to classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix and various Wong Kar-wai films.
Here, they pull out a Murderer’s Row of killer references, from the works of Wong Kar-wai to 2001: A Space Odyssey, to John Woo, to the Wachowskis.
But while the Daniels quote 2001: A Space Odyssey in one scene and The Terminator in another, the movie’s biggest touchpoint is The Matrix , and not just because Evelyn discovers, to her surprise, that she knows kung fu.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about Everything Everywhere All At Once , a film in which a notable plot point involves riffing on 2001: A Space Odyssey to explain an alternate reality where humans evolved hot dogs for fingers, is that it sometimes doesn’t feel that weird.
Meanwhile, film lovers will spot easter eggs to films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey , In the Mood For Love , Ratatouille , and more.
While the concept of the multiverse has gained mainstream popularity thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the film feels more indebted to the interdimensional cable episodes of Rick and Morty mixed with the stylized glamour of Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (and especially the latter’s penchant for metatextual references to other films).
This is a movie that operates at the revved-up pace of stories like Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World or the recent animated Oscar nominee The Mitchells vs. the Machines , with the characters dragged breathlessly from one manic action sequence to the next.
It seems likely that Everything is destined for the same middling box office and future cult adoration as Donnie Darko , Speed Racer , and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World .
One could say it exists somewhere between Scott Pilgrim vs. the World , Back to the Future , and Manifesto (that movie where Cate Blanchett delivers monologues across multiple identities), but even then it remains mostly indescribable, as fans of the filmmakers’ previous excursion, Swiss Army Man , probably understand.
There are hints of The Matrix , and also Inception , and likely direct homages to quite a few different Kung Fu movies.
Daniels achieve something reminiscent of Memento (2000) or Inception (2010), where Nolan explores an intricate temporal layering that requires the viewer to piece together the whole picture in their head—and achieves it with absolute precision.
They’re marked with circular scribbles that recall the spherical symbolism of Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Hudsucker Proxy , which, even more than The Matrix , seems to be the movie that the Daniels are chasing—a holy grail of wise-guy existentialism that’s also a case study in indie auteurs getting to play with a big budget.
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The parallels to a thousand other things, from Cloud Atlas to The Matrix to Douglas Adams (AC Weisbecker’s 1986 book, Cosmic Banditos , arguably the funniest book ever written about quantum physics, also deserves mention here), are obvious, and the casting alone should give you some sense of the pop culture stunt the Daniels are trying to pull off.
It can be a not-so-good thing: “Cloud Atlas” from 2012, or “Jupiter Ascending” (2015) -- baroque sci-fi fantasies that topple over like a wedding cake with too much frosting.
This maximalist sledgehammer of a film—something of a cross between Cloud Atlas , Enter The Void , Kung Fu Hustle , and a full season of Rick And Morty— has the energy, insanity, and exuberance of Daniels’s DJ Snake and Lil John “Turn Down For What” video and the shock value of their “farting Daniel Radcliffe corpse” movie Swiss Army Man.
Speaking of not realizing how good we had it, it’s telling that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” deliberately evokes so many different movies from 1999 (Daniels also tap into the manic thrum of “Magnolia” in order to depict the entropy of Evelyn’s daily life, and exhume the swaggering nihilism of “Fight Club” for the villain’s self-destructive mayhem).