Everything Everywhere All at Once Movie Review: Michelle Yeoh Knocks It Out of the Multiverse In This High-Concept Sci-Fi Drama (LatestLY Exclusive)

Everything Everywhere All at Once Movie Review: The concept of multiverse has just started booming lately in media, but as a whole, the products have already made it feel like a overplayed trope where experimenting as a risk doesn’t exist all together. That was until now as the Daniels popped up out of nowhere and brought us Everything Everywhere All at Once, and took a story that featured a high sci-fi concept, but gave it the most important characteristic of it all – a human touch. Pinocchio Movie Review: An Inspired Tom Hanks Performance Can’t Save Robert Zemeckis’ Dispirited Remake of Disney's Classic (LatestLY Exclusive).

Directed and written by the team of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known as the “Daniels”), comes Everything Everywhere All at Once. When Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is being audited by the IRS, she must face a multiversal threat which puts the fate of everything at hand and must come to terms with her relationship with her husband Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan), and daughter Joy Wang (Stephanie Hsu). A bit of a warning as well, some minor spoilers will be mentioned in the review.

From the first scene itself, Everything Everywhere All at Once is an insanity ride that never stops. Seeing Evelyn gather her receipts while preparing for the celebration of Chinese New Year at her laundromat, the movie immediately introduces you to its main focuses – her relationship with her husband, daughter and father. With a strain being at every corner, Michelle Yeoh is able to translate that overwhelming sense of Evelyn really well which makes her an immediate highlight.

Living a life full of regrets, there is a certain character progression being developed here which focuses on the main theme of acceptance. Yeoh’s Evelyn can be seen harkening back on the past in the glorious multiversal jumps the film has to offer and ponder on the question of “What if?” However, those questions are never really used as tools of revisionism as they are upended by an earnest supporting cast that never really lets you down.

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Ke Huy Quan’s Waymond is an affectionate father as his multiversal counterpart creates for some of the most thrilling moments of the film and interesting dynamic with Evelyn, while Stephanie Hsu’s Joy provides for the heart of the film as her emotional conflict with her mother comes to a head at many points. Jamie Lee Curtis’ Deidre Beaubeirdre also comes off as a surprise with her stern IRS agent character having quite a subversion. The cast plays into the themes of the movie and that’s what Everything Everywhere All at Once does so well. Beast Movie Review: Idris Elba’s Duel With a Lion Is Wrapped Up in an Anti-Climactic Match (LatestLY Exclusive).

It takes its multiversal concept and makes it a backdoor while fleshing out real human lives. There is a sense of relatability in every frame that is bolstered by a bombastic set of events that keep pushing the meter to an 11. While the multiversal rules of Everything Everywhere All at Once can indeed end up feeling like everything, everywhere, all at once, that overwhelming nature layered under layers of exposition never really gets to you in an annoying way.

Multiversal jumps take place that sees character harness the qualities of their parallel universe counterparts, and there is history within every one of them. One universe sees Evelyn never get married to Waymond and achieve her dream of being a movie star (that borrows the styling of In the Mood for Love), while another parodies the concept of Pixar’s Ratatouille and calls its Racacoonie, or there is one where everyone has sausages for fingers - there is uniqueness seeping through every corner of it.

The movie does a great job at balancing the weight of the verse jumps as it is utlitised wonderfully in Everything Everywhere All at Once’s fight sequences. The Daniels bring a unique set of tool case here which sees Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan use their talents to the advantage of the film. Verse jumps happen mid-fight and no two of them end up feeling the same as a result. Seeing Yeoh use the power of kindness in the end to neutralise those who stood in her path was an inspired concept and one that’s paid off really well and builds up to a scene that somehow makes a conversation between two rocks feels emotional.

Another point of praise needs to be given to the technical aspects of Everything Everywhere All at Once too. Aspect ratio changes every now and then delivering a sense of cinematic flair while the effects of the multiverse themselves feel simplistic yet effective. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Movie Review: Benedict Cumberbatch’s Marvel Film Revels in Sam Raimi’s Horror Vibes and Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch Act (LatestLY Exclusive).

With all its multiversal hijinks though that would put Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to shame, the main message behind Everything Everywhere All at Once is perhaps one of the most powerful things you will see this year that will definitely have you in tears by the end. Essentially just boiling down to a fact that one hug is enough to resolve anything, it’s beautiful in a way that a story about a million different universes focused on a single constant of love and acceptance.

Yay!

The Cast

Concept

Nay!

Rules Can Feel Overwhelming

Final Thoughts

In a multiversal story where themes of love and acceptance provide for one of the most relatable tales of 2022, the Daniels knock it out of the part with Everything Everywhere All at Once. Michelle Yeoh kills it as Evelyn Wang while the supporting cast of Ke Huy Quan and Stephanie Hsu provide for a human touch that many high-concept stories like this fail to deliver on. One of 2022's best, Everything Everywhere All at Once releases in theatres in India on September 16, 2022.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 14, 2022 07:26 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).