Last week, Jamie Lee Curtis sparked “internet feud” headlines when she gleefully declared on social media that her new film “out marvels any Marvel movie”. The multiverse-themed Everything Everywhere All At Once has indeed been giving Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (which cost eight times as much) a run for its money, both financially and artistically. Punching way above its weight, this inventive indie pic boasts spectacular ambitions that belie its limited budget. Yet for all its madcap invention and frenzied visual wit, what drives this story of a woman trapped in a world of “laundry and taxes” is a tangible emotional wallop – that most “special” effect that franchise blockbusters so often fail to deliver.
Michelle Yeoh sinks her teeth into a kaleidoscopic role that cheekily draws on her own genre-hopping back catalogue. She plays Evelyn Wang, a disillusioned and exhausted Chinese American woman who runs a laundromat with her smilingly disappointing husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan, who first rose to fame as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). Together, they are trying to fend off IRS auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdra, played with a jobsworth sneer and a frightening fringe by Jamie Lee Curtis.
