If you could be any version of yourself in a universe of infinite possibilities, which would you choose? It's a question that runs through the heart of the highwire genre hybrid Everything Everywhere All at Once, which – if the title, which could be a lyric from Bo Burnham's internet satire, wasn't a giveaway – concerns Hollywood's latest commercial obsession, the multiverse: that parallel-reality home to Neos and Spider-Men and all the IP studios seem ready to summon with endless variations on the same.
A somewhat more ambitious application of the concept, this second film from music video mavericks turned feature directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert – who collectively go by Daniels – is, among other things, an existential sci-fi thriller, a kung fu throwdown, a tender immigrant story, a loving tribute to one screen icon and a heroic resuscitation of another, and a warp-speed ride through a half-century of cinema sprinkled with scatological, 00s internet humour.
It's already the Best Movie Ever according to users of the social media platform Letterboxd, a site with which Everything Everywhere shares more than a touch of effusive film-fan sensibility.
Daniels's greatest asset is, of course, the indelible Chinese Malaysian star Michelle Yeoh, a bona fide legend of both Hong Kong action cinema (Royal Warriors; The Heroic Trio) and global hits (Tomorrow Never Dies; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) who's become a kind of all-purpose Chinese matron for lazy Hollywood, in movies like Crazy Rich Asians and Marvel's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Yeoh brings the weight of her career to the role of Evelyn Wang, a middle-aged Chinese American immigrant who lives above the Simi Valley, California laundromat she owns and operates with her meek, slightly goofy husband, Waymond – Ke Huy Quan, 80s child star of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, all grown up and returned from a long and roundabout wilderness – and her sardonic, increasingly distant 20-something daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu).
Once upon a time in China, Evelyn dreamed of becoming an actor; now, she's a harried mum stressing over her penny-pinching clientele and worried that her ancient, notoriously disapproving father (James Hong), who's visiting from the mainland, will freak out when he discovers Joy is bringing her girlfriend (Tallie Medel) to the upcoming Chinese New Year bash.
Worse, the Wangs are hauled into the cavernous, multistorey local branch of the IRS to face off with an officious auditor – played by Jamie Lee Curtis in a mustard turtleneck, prosthetic stomach and Dr Zaius wig – who threatens them with financial ruin. All that, and a dejected Waymond is about to file for divorce.
Domestic crisis soon transforms into science fiction fantasy when another version of Waymond – an emissary from one of many multiverses, which owes a sizeable debt to The Matrix – materialises to jolt Evelyn out of her funk, and suddenly she finds herself at the nexus of every possible version of reality, battling a cosmic force determined to plunge the multiverse into chaos.
Just another day at the tax office, then.
As the film tumbles into a hyperactive, shapeshifting narrative, Evelyns of every dimension flash before us. In one reality, she's become a (who'd've guessed) Hong Kong action movie star, in sequences spliced with red-carpet clips of the real-life Yeoh and romantic scenes that mimic the films of Wong Kar-wai. As worlds shift, so does the frame: a standard 1.85:1 aspect ratio for the world of reality; grainy Academy ratio for flashbacks; Shawscope-like anamorphic wide-screen for the kung fu-powered multiverse action.
The chaos from which Evelyn must save the multiverse, it turns out, is none other than a mischievous version of her own daughter. A super-kawaii hellion who calls herself Jobu Tupaki, this trans-dimensional diva is a true child of the digital age, capable of experiencing every moment in time and space simultaneously. Played by Hsu with an irresistible insouciance, she's a chaotic force of possibility, of unbounded queerness, animated by the power to transcend the labels and limits that humanity imposes upon itself.
"You're still hung up on the fact that I like girls in this world," she scoffs at her real-world mum. "The universe is so much bigger than you realise."
Despite the movie's antic, splintered reality, it's an age-old story of mother-daughter conflict – Turning Red in Philip K. Dick cosplay – haunted by the generational disapproval of a stern, traditional grandfather. This tale of life's regrets, of immigrant dreams dashed in transit, is inherently moving, even as it feels at odds with a film whose formal qualities are designed to overpower and subdue its audience.
Daniels, whose 2016 debut Swiss Army Man was surprisingly mawkish for a film about a farting corpse, have a tendency to over-bake their absurdism and sentimentality.
Their millennial hipster weakness for rAnDoM amazeballs humour yields both eye-rollingly unfunny bits (butt plug gags, a universe-collapsing 'everything' bagel) and some pretty inspired goofs – an imagined timeline where humanity evolved to have hot dogs for fingers, complete with a 2001 Dawn of Man parody, is mostly charming, as is an animatronic raccoon and the movie's surfeit of googly eyes (never not funny).
It all adds up to the sort of chirpy, cartoon surrealism that takes its cues less from the pan-dimensional unease of, say, Apichatpong Weerasethakul or David Lynch, whose movies genuinely engage with, and succumb to, the multiplicities of identity and psychic drift, than it does the comic-book storytelling of the superhero genre, where the multiverse is but a vehicle for familiar narrative comforts (it's no surprise to discover that the Russo brothers, the team behind Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, served as producers).
But the movie is such a monument to Yeoh that its occasional corniness, even its eager-to-please, gag-a-minute brio, can't help but add to the strangely moving effect.
That the veteran star can play fast, hyperkinetic comedy and soulful melodrama has long been a given, but the way she draws these strands together, and layers them with an extra-textual sense of life's regret, is a remarkable show of her range – a screen star reconciling a life that might have been with the one she's lived.
"I saw my life without you," Evelyn tells Waymond in one of the film's most resonant scenes, as though she'd caught of glimpse of Yeoh's off-screen fame. "It was beautiful."
It's a great tribute, and yet it's Quan who – as he did in Temple of Doom, the weirdest, wildest, and best of the Spielberg-Lucas adventure series – nearly steals the show, having lost none of his ability to mix childlike sincerity with snappy humour, even after all these years away from the camera. Call it the Quanaissance.
Waymond's sense of a life unlived, of resigning himself to the background, is doubly affecting given Quan's explosive career start and Hollywood's subsequent indifference; the movie functions as a kind of alternate timeline where he and fellow 80s stars Yeoh and James Hong, the enduring cult icon of Blade Runner and Big Trouble in Little China, got to dominate American cinema into the future.
It's this world of possibility, of resurrections and alternate futures, that makes Daniels's deference to rote narrative, to learning to embrace what's 'real' and right in front of you, more than a little dispiriting.
At one point, Evelyn chooses chaos, and it seems like she and Joy might throw the multiverse into thrilling disorder, when a rapid-fire experimental montage reconfigures Evelyn as an alien, an anime goddess, an otherworldly traveller; no rules, just infinite, post-human potential. It yields the film's one truly transcendent moment, in which the Wang women find themselves reincarnated in a peaceful timeline where humans never existed – like something out of The Tree of Life, with pet rocks standing in for cosmic montage.
But Daniels pull their existential punches, walking back from the curiosity of the unknown to put their faith in love, kindness, and other quaint human stand-bys. In a multiverse filled with so many possibilities and transformations of self, the film's sentimental send-off – as forcefully moving as it is – feels like a missed opportunity.
Still, getting there is quite a ride. Whichever way you dice it, there's nothing else quite like it in mainstream American cinema at the multiplex.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is in cinemas from April 14.
