This 2022 film- the most awarded movie of all time, if you include its non-Oscars-- frequently gets called "groundbreaking." Those comments reference the success of an American film-which features a predominantly Asian main cast. Those same commentators often overlook how rare it is for (1) a comedy and (2) an SFF film to win best picture. Okay, sure, the publicity people don't call it Science Fiction or Fantasy. Most critics have defaulted to "absurdist." That's a perfectly cromulent designation in this case, but it carries a whiff of snobbery, as it has become the default term for works that could legitimately be categorized as Science Fiction and/or Fantasy, but which have literary and mainstream (although a lot of "mainstream" in the 2020s is SFF) and artistic aspirations beyond, I guess, what some people think SFF should have. Or, perhaps, they still think "SF" and "Fantasy" mean, exclusively and respectively, rocket ships and elves. Perhaps A. O. Scott of The New York Times described it best when he called the film a "swirl of genre anarchy" (April 18, 2022).
However you classify it, Everything Everywhere All at Once makes for fascinating viewing.
The short version: a struggling family try to save their business and their marriage while preparing a Chinese New Year party which the somewhat-estranged grandfather will be attending. Their already difficult life becomes infinitely more complicated when multiple universes start collapsing.
I love the entertaining manner in which the film embraces its premise and gradually reveals enough that everyone should be able to figure out what's going on-- or just accept events on their own terms when we cannot.
Nerdculture has long embraced the concept of a multiverse, and the mainstream has slowly followed. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the writer/directors, have expressed their concern that, as they worked on this film, multiple films and shows involving the multiverse seemed to get dropped all around them. Everything Everywhere All at Once imparts its own take on the concept, but it cannot be called wholly original. Think of this as Crisis on Infinite Earths, if that legendary comic crossover focused on a struggling immigrant family rather than superheroes, and the villainous Anti-Monitor was.... Well, that would be telling. The quest which Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), family matriarch and protagonist, undertakes, only gradually reveals her adversary's identity. Almost any further description of the plot results in spoilers. The film really needs to be experienced.
Yeoh gives what could be a career-defining performance, and yet one so complex that she could hardly be type-cast for it. Everyone in this film does an exceptional job, a fact made more remarkable by the bizarre demands made upon them.
The script's "genre anarchy" creates a story that really needed to be told as a motion picture. The visual effects that enhance and propel the narrative overall are spectacular. The 2001: A Space Odyssey parody (at this point, 2001 parodies have become visual shorthand in movies), however, looks cheaper than it needed to be.
This is a fun (if lengthy) trip to a satisfying, if hardly groundbreaking, conclusion. In an absurd world we cannot possibly comprehend, treating people nicely seems the only meaningful thing we can do.
For all of the commentary on Asian representation, the film strikes me as universal. Yes, Joy Wang (Stephanie Hsu) had to be queer, and yes, the Wang family display a number of Chinese cultural characteristics. However, one could imagine, in an alternate universe, a version of this family who were first-generation American- Nigerian or Korean or Italian or Whatever. They would display some specific elements of their culture, but the underlying story would be similar. In the end, this is just a really good, utterly bizarre film about a family having a really bad time and learning to overcome hilariously daunting obstacles in order to live and love in an absurdist world.
Written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang
Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang
Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang
Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdre
James Hong as Gong Gong
Tallie Medel as Becky Sregor
Jenny Slate as Debbie the Dog Mom
Harry Shum Jr. as Chad
Biff Wiff as Rick
Sunita Mani as TV Musical Queen
Aaron Lazar as TV Musical Soldier
Li Jing as Kung Fu Master
Dylan Henry Lau as Young Waymond
Peter Boon Koh as Maternity Doctor
Timothy Eulich as Laundromat Police
Daniel Scheinert as District Manager
Michiko Nishiwaki as Martial Arts Actor
Jason Hamer, Timothy Ralston, Hiroshi Yada as Puppeteers