“Everything Everywhere All at Once” could not be a more accurate title for the second feature film from the filmmaking team “The Daniels,” Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known for their 2016 film “Swiss Army Man” and the striking music video for DJ Snake and Lil Jon, “Turn Down for What.” In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the duo take every existential question, raunchy joke and nonsensical notion they’ve seemingly ever had and throw it all at the screen in a chaotic, hectic and utterly exhausting two hours and 12 minutes, an all-consuming sensorial cinematic assault. Whether or not that sounds like a good time at the movies is up to the viewer to decide.
The audaciously daring and original filmmaking on display is indeed laudable, as well as the obvious delight poured into the making of this film. However, admiring the chutzpah of The Daniels doesn’t necessarily translate into actual enjoyment of the film, which is a high-concept project with plenty of flair, but a crucial lack of finesse in storytelling.
It’s the script that’s the fatal flaw in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Though deeply earnest and heartfelt, with a desire to engage in larger questions of existence and love across time, space and form, it’s incredibly messy, unbalanced and unmotivated, and demands a certain measure of goodwill from the viewer that it does not reciprocate. Because the story is such an extreme concept, the script is made up almost entirely of rapid-fire exposition, explanation and monologues; when nothing makes sense a character says, “that doesn’t make sense,” deployed like some kind of screenwriting “get out of jail free” card that doesn’t pass muster. Chapter titles as a structuring device are used in a manner that is downright rude, and the film “ends” no less than nine times.
This is all just to say that describing the premise of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is a unique challenge. The luminous and legendary Michelle Yeoh stars, playing against type as Evelyn, the harried proprietress of a laundromat, juggling her father’s arrival from China, her daughter’s desire to have her girlfriend accepted by the family and her husband’s threats of divorce, plus the challenges of keeping a small business running, including a looming tax audit. Evelyn doesn’t have time or attention to dole out to anyone, and her family is struggling.
It’s at said tax audit that something strange happens: her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan, yes, Data from “The Goonies” and Short Round from “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”) seemingly transforms into a new person, and informs her that she’s actually part of a large, extended multiverse. He teaches her how to jump into other parallel lives she’s led, like ones where she studied martial arts, perhaps. It’s like “Sliding Doors” if the doors were constantly sliding, a million miles a minute, and what was required to slide them was performing some kind of absurd action (at least one element of this mechanism that’s not entirely explained). Within the confines of this drab office building, Evelyn must fight her way through the farthest corners of the multiverse in order to save her family, because, inconveniently, her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is also the big bad final boss of this (theoretical) place.
Drawing from classic martial arts movies, video games, and psychedelics probably, there are a few inspired bits and great performances throughout, especially from Yeoh, who demonstrates a real ability for comedy. Quan delivers the most heartfelt performance, and even gets the best fight scene, which will make you look at a fanny pack like never before.
But the jokes, references, fights and multiverses start coming and don’t stop, and before long, you just want to shout, “enough!” Turns out, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is simply too much.
———
‘EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE’
2 stars (out of 4)
MPAA rating: R (for some violence, sexual material and language)
Running time: 2:12
Where to watch: in theaters Friday
———
