catholic movie review everything everywhere all at once

Love Everything (Everywhere All at Once)

As the Oscars have now made clear ,  Everything Everywhere All at Once  is this year’s darling. That, of course, is not the same as being a great movie. In fact, much of this one is unpleasant. Whoever edited it is some kind of mad genius, mercilessly jerking and wrenching and snapping the viewer from place to place, from style to style, from peril to peace to peril.

Despite this, I watched to the end because of Michelle Yeoh, who has now been rewarded with an Oscar for her work. She is the beautiful heart of the movie playing a wife who wakes up to the fact that she has been wasting her life in a bitter marriage.

But what’s different this time is that our heroine (did I mention that Michelle Yeoh is perfection?) does not awake to find that her husband, her kids, her job, her religion, or her place in a patriarchal society are the problem. Rather, it is herself.

She does not love.

She has judged her husband a weakling, her father a bully, and her (of course, gay) daughter a drag. And each is, to some degree, just what she judges them to be. But so what? They are lovable—and in the case of her husband, very loving. It is she who has refused.

At what its makers probably think of as its deepest level, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a nihilist and absurdist plea just to be nice because nothing means anything (They hit the “nothing means anything” theme pretty hard).

But in Michelle Yeoh’s performance, the movie finds something much deeper: a resentful person who wakes up to her own lack of love. Her discovery that she has not loved her family—especially her husband—and her decision to remedy the situation by loving make the whole jagged ride worthwhile.

What a rare—and noble—film version of liberation, to become love in the heart of a family.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once may be the most Christian film you watch this year

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Oscar-winning  Everything Everywhere All at Once  is totally bonkers, says Ben Cohen. But it is littered with Christian parallels that shine the hope of the gospel into the deepest darkness of human experience

Right now, the multiverse theory is still just that - a theory, in the brain-scramblingly complex world of theoretical physics. In short, along with the vastness of our own universe, there exist numberless other parallel universes with subtle, or not-so-subtle differences, to our own. Oh, and it may be possible to access these through black holes, though you really don’t want to try that.

In the worlds of sci-fi and fantasy, this idea is now an established fixture. Heroes and villains can jump between alternative realities, meet and fight against or alongside different versions of themselves and reappear from another universe after they have been unwisely killed off.

In Everything Everywhere All at Once, Oscar-winning writers and directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, have chosen to do something a little more original (and thought provoking) than the likes of Doctor Strange and Spiderman .

Evelyn choses to have her whole being cracked open to save the world. I trust you see the divine parallel

And whether it crossed their minds or not, they have painted a multiverse that somehow evokes the presence of God. Through its portrayal of a very human love, it points to a God who loves every single human being so fiercely that he immerses himself in every single different version of the universe to do it.

A life less ordinary

Evelyn Wang’s life is not going well. She has emigrated from China to the USA, where she runs a failing laundromat with her long-suffering husband Waymond. Waymond, for all his constant good cheer, is filing for divorce.

Their daughter, Joy, is also unhappy. This is brought to a head when Evelyn introduces Joy’s long-term girlfriend to her elderly father as Joy’s “good friend”. Meanwhile, Evelyn and Waymond are preparing to file their questionable tax return to the Inland Revenue Service (IRS). Their livelihood is at stake and, with Evelyn’s imaginative accounting, things are not looking good.

If you’re thinking at this stage that Everything Everywhere sounds like a not terribly original indie drama, hold tight (or if you don’t want plot spoilers, you may wish to disembark altogether). Things are about to get complicated. And weird.

Cracked wide open

As Evelyn and Waymond take the lift to their IRS interview, Waymond’s body is taken over by “Alpha-Waymond”, a parallel version of himself from another universe. Evelyn’s universe, and every other universe in existence, is at threat of being destroyed by the “evil” Jobu.

Jobu had been learning to “verse jump” between realities. However, the experiment goes tragically wrong and Jobu, her consciousness now “cracked”, experiences every possible plane of existence at once. The pain and sadness of this moves her to create what she calls an “everything bagel”, a kind of black hole, which has the power to destroy not just a few galaxies, but the whole multiverse itself.

Like the multiverse-gobbling bagel, this film is topped with a bit of everything: absurdist fantasy, martial arts, surreal comedy, and a love story (of sorts). But, at its core, lie two beating hearts (a bit like Dr Who) and both are deeply Christlike.

In the pain

To defeat the evil Jobu, Evelyn learns that she, too, must become “cracked”, and experience every single version of the multiverse. Only by doing so can she understand why Jobu would want to end everything, everywhere. Evelyn chooses to have her whole being cracked open to save the world – well, all the worlds. I trust you see the divine parallel there.

The "evil Jobu" turns out to be Evelyn’s daughter, Joy. In a myriad of different realities, they are still mother and daughter and, in each one, their dysfunctional relationship leaves Joy miserable.

Jobu/Joy doesn’t want to destroy the multiverse; she wants to find a version of her mother who can see what Joy has seen: that every version of existence is absurd, pointless and painful. Then they can both launch themselves into the bagel shaped void together to end the pain of existence.

Evelyn, having spectacularly failed in her life, is seduced by this idea and fights viciously to bring it about. However, in one of her many universes, she meets a version of her husband Waymond, whose constant, whimsical upbeat nature she has dismissed as weakness.

“You tell me that it’s a cruel world…When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naïve,” says this version of Waymond. “It is strategic and necessary…you go through life with your fists held tight. You see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight.”

Evelyn is the original “hound of heaven”, entering into every possible reality and chasing her daughter with a fierce, relentless love

Waymond has chosen to fight despair with hope, and brutality with kindness. And he inspires Evelyn to do the same. She battles her adversaries by healing them, fixing one assailant’s back problems in mid battle like a ninja osteopath. Yes, this film is, amongst many things, a comedy.

Evelyn has learned the message of 1 Peter 3:9: "Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing.” It is a choice that turns her battle against the forces of despair around, and brings a resolution to the film that left me in tears.

Into the void

Having undergone a truly biblical change of heart, Evelyn still needs to rescue her daughter from plunging in to the void. In one universe, she forcibly pulls Joy away from the bagel of annihilation. However, the real power is played out in the original universe, in their laundrette.

“I’m tired,” Joy tells her mother. “I don’t want to hurt anymore. And for some reason, when I’m with you, it hurts both of us. So let’s just go our separate ways…Please.”

“Out of all of the places I could be, why would I want to be here with you?” asks Evelyn “You are right. It doesn’t make sense.” However, she adds: “No matter what, I still want to be here with you. I will always want to be here with you.”

Joy is eventually saved by the burning unconditional love of a mother for her prodigal child. By using the Sermon-on-the-Mount (ish) rulebook of her husband, Evelyn becomes the original “hound of heaven”, entering into every possible reality and chasing her with a fierce, relentless love. She is a mother hen that risks everything to gather her baby chick under the protection of her wings (Matthew 23:37).

Like Joy’s nihilistic view of life, Everything Everywhere All at Once is, to use a colloquial term, totally bonkers. In this respect, it follows many absurdist films, plays and novels before it. However, for most of these other works, the message is loud and clear: “Life is quite absurd / and death’s the final word”, to quote Monty Python.

Everything Everywhere stares into the darkness and, like the persecuted Christians I encounter in my job at Open Doors, it dares to see hope instead of despair. For that, it deserves every Oscar the multiverse can shower upon it.

More from Ben Cohen

Bunfight! Why I waded into the “not cross bun” controversy, and you definitely shouldn’t

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Faith and FOMO in Everything Everywhere All at Once

Zachary Lee • April 20, 2022

Maybe our ‘best life’ isn’t the version in which we have it all, but the one where we live as those who have been loved.

How do you deal with a crumbling marriage, an “everything bagel” that threatens to destroy the known multiverse, and–worst of all–overdue taxes? Just add googly eyes.

If you found yourself rolling your own eyes, you agree with Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), the protagonist in Everything Everywhere All at Once . No film quite embodies its title with such perfection as this second feature from directing duo the Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert). Even before the movie gets into the aforementioned bagel (or the characters with hot dogs for fingers), it immerses you in the “ too muchness ” of its title.

Back to the googly eyes. Evelyn’s cheery husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) places said items on surfaces throughout their failing laundromat business, in an attempt to lighten the mood. Husband and wife might as well be living in separate worlds; while Waymond tries to find joy in the midst of chaos, Evelyn is keenly aware that “ each day has enough trouble of its own .” The Daniels emphasize the claustrophobia of Evelyn’s daily life. As she hacks her way through a jungle of messy receipts before her IRS appointment; prepares dinner for her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) and her girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel), despite feeling hesitant about their relationship; and tends to her ailing father (James Hong), you can’t help but think she’ll splinter if just one more thing goes wrong.

The Daniels cleverly make these trials feel on par with the multiversal spectacle heading Evelyn’s way, so that by the time things take a turn from the stress-inducing to the bizarre, it's a breath of fresh air. When Evelyn goes to the IRS office, alternate versions of people she knows come spilling out from other universes, telling her that she’s the only one who can defeat the villain Jobu Tupaki, who threatens to destroy the known multiverse. Though initially disinterested (who cares about other universes when, in this one, taxes are due?), Evelyn soon becomes entranced by the infinite other realities–including the other lives she could have lived.

Everything Everywhere All at Once could have spent the rest of its running time relishing in every zany alternate reality the Daniels constructed. But embedded in this collage of excess is a realization of what is lost when we gain the whole world in exchange for our soul . Perhaps by accepting our finitude, we open ourselves up to the radical, upside-down reality found in the gospels: one built on a sacrificial love that embraces the mess we find ourselves in.

Embedded in this collage of excess is a realization of what is lost when we gain the whole world in exchange for our soul.

At first, Evelyn relishes in the “what if.” After visiting a universe where she never married Waymond and became a famous movie star instead, she insensitively tells him, “I saw . . . my life without you. I wish you could have seen it. It was beautiful.” As Evelyn jumps among universes, each one is colorful in a visually arresting way, from the glamor of her life as a movie star to the vibrancy of her work as a hibachi chef. As Evelyn realizes all the places she could be, they stand in stark contrast to the drabness of her own laundromat life.

But there’s a dark side to these temptations, evidenced by Jobu Tupaki, who can embody every reality at once. In one of the film’s many clever action sequences, Jobu (played by Hsu in a dual role) dispatches police officers in idiosyncratic ways. Decked in a glittering white jacket and pink hair, she body slams one officer and makes another explode into confetti before slurping out the bullets from another’s gun, as if it was a straw. It’s all done with the same excess of color that characterized Evelyn’s universe jumping, yet registers as far more sinister. Furthermore, Evelyn begins to vomit after too many “jumps;” it’s as if her finite body begins to reject the infinite that she’s tasted. You see her mind and body fracture onscreen, as if crumbling under the weight of her longing for what could have been.

In the film's most powerful moment, the simmering tension between Evelyn and Joy becomes volcanic. (Spoilers ahead.) Joy tries to leave the family back in Evelyn’s original reality, shouting to her mother, “Let me go!” For a moment, Evelyn entertains it. The Daniels then offer a montage of scenes in which Evelyn lets her daughter go in all realities. (In a world where Evelyn and Joy are rocks–with googly eyes–Joy’s rock tumbles over a cliff, while Evelyn’s remains idle.) From a human perspective, Evelyn’s choice makes sense; she could be anything anywhere all at once, so why bother with this dreary universe, which obviously brings so much pain?

But Evelyn runs after her daughter (and her rock falls down the chasm to chase after Joy’s). “No matter what, I still want to be here with you. I will always . . . always want to be here with you,” she tearfully declares. This picture of sacrificial love mirrors another love that is as beautiful as it is nonsensical: that of the gospel. Of all the realities Christ could have chosen by which to enter the world, such as a conquering king, he instead chose the path of the suffering servant . He does not need us, yet he loves us, abandoning the 99 other realities he could have chosen in favor of the one that means “ God with us ,” even in our pain.

With its endless options for Evelyn, Everything Everywhere All At Once recognizes that, yes, perhaps the grass is greener in another universe. Maybe we’re right to have FOMO about living our best lives. Yet the movie also suggests that the “best life” isn’t necessarily the version in which we have it all, but the one where we live as those who have been loved, despite our difficulties and mistakes . What better life is there to live than one marked by the kind of love Jesus showed to us: one that pursues us even if it doesn't make sense, one that chases after us fiercely, and one that doesn't see us for the worst things we’ve done. A love that jumps universes.

Topics: Movies

Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, colloquially known as “Daniels”, have earned themselves a unique position in modern filmmaking. They first came to prominence directing the music video for Turn Down For What , before working with A24 on their first film, Swiss Army Man (2016). Scheinert then went off on his own to direct the incredible dark comedy The Death of Dick Long (2019). Now they’re finally back together for their sophomore film together, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022).

Content Guide

Violence/Scary Images:  Limited gore but the film is an action movie with numerous scenes of blood and death. Often injuries are played for laughs. Language/Crude Humor:  Severe language throughout including f*** and s***. Sexual Content:  No sex or nudity is depicted on screen but sexuality is a frequent plot point. The main character’s daughter is in a lesbian relationship, and her coming out as gay to her grandfather is a major part of the narrative. There are also several action scenes where sex toys are used as weapons and a scene of a man going into a back room filled with sex toys. Drug/Alcohol Use: Characters smoke and vape. There is alcohol consumption. Spiritual Content:  Religion plays no role in the story. The film’s philosophy is that life is ultimately meaningless and the only solution to despair and loneliness is human connection and kindness. Other Negative Themes:  Themes of suicide, despair, and meaninglessness. Positive Content:  Themes of kindness, connection, communication, love, and honesty.

To say that the Daniels have certain cinematic preoccupations would be an understatement. Swiss Army Man begins with a man about to commit suicide, before transitioning into an existentialist comedy about bonding with a farting corpse. Their films are silly, scatological, disgusting, nihilistic, and emotionally charged, brimming with absurd imagery and willing to use every moment of grotesque visual storytelling to drag the viewer along and force them to ponder the meaning of life.

And that’s all to say that Swiss Army Man was a promise, one of the best debut films of the past decade, and a hope that these two directors would reunite and grow as artists together. It appears with their second collaboration they’ve not only done so but knocked it out of the park with one of the most intense tour-de-force films in recent Hollywood history.

It’s easy to love a film like Everything Everywhere All At Once . It’s a film straight out of the Edgar Wright playbook—a genre mashup comedy filled with huge references to everything from Kung Fu movies to Terminator, The Matrix, Ratatouille , etc—but also a film that tries to marry it to Terrance Malick-esc emotional reflection on the nature of life, purpose, and ultimate meaning in the universe.

And since it is a Daniels production, it ultimately transforms into a film about the desire for self-annihilation within the endless meaninglessness of the universe, and the equal urge to force the universe to mean something when the urge to stare into the abyss is hanging over you. The result is a film that is, in some regards, emotionally juvenile, but cinematically impressive.

The film follows a small Chinese-American family struggling to get by in a failing laundromat. Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is a mostly frustrated and unhappy middle-aged woman who is struggling with finances, struggling to reconcile her relationship with her estranged father, struggling in her marriage, and struggling to relate to her recently outed lesbian daughter.

During an average visit to the IRS to work out her tax problems, she’s confronted by a mysterious individual who possesses her husband and tells her that she is the key to saving the multiverse. She is given Bluetooth devices that allow her to trade minds with other Evelyns from other universes long enough to experience their lives and steal their abilities – kung fu fighting ability, cooking abilities, etc – that she can use to help survive a brutal supervillain who is hunting her down across the multiverse for some unclear reason.

There is a lot to recommend with Everything Everywhere All The Time . It is immensely funny, brutally emotional, goofy, action-packed, mind-altering, and thrilling. But what really sells it is its introspection. It’s a very small personal story—a story of a family of four struggling to overcome neglect and resentment—that is blown up into cosmic proportions. It’s a film where the utter vastness of the universe itself is a thematic stand-in for the emotional space created between characters who don’t know how to be honest with one another—people who just want to be told that it is okay for them to be the way they are.

It helps that the cast is an all-time great ensemble. Michelle Yeoh has completely broken out into the mainstream in the past decade in a surprising way, which is refreshing if you’ve known her long enough to remember her career-defining role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon . She’s a star in Star Trek: Discovery , The Mandalorian , The Book of Boba Fett , Crazy Rich Asians , and Shang-Chi , and she is set for roles in The Witcher Blood Origin and Avatar 2 . And she gives one of her best performances to date for Everything Everywhere All the Time, playing a very vulnerable and sad role of a woman who is forced to reflect on a lifetime of mediocre choices and decisions and struggles to reconcile them.

The great James Hong and Jamie Lee Curtis are both on deck for major roles, turning in excellent funny performances for vital characters. The quiet MVP might very well be the surprising performance of Ke Huy Quan who is (I KID YOU NOT) best known for his performance as Short Round in Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom . The performance calls for him to play multiple roles simultaneously including a bumbling beta-male husband and a universe hopping conspiracy theorist scientist, and he has the range to make the role fully his, playing a vital part in the plot.

Certainly, much of the film is melodramatic. There is always a danger with wacky, emotionally heightened films such as this that the wackiness serves no purpose, that it’s all just channeling juvenile emotional stakes. And there is certainly some truth in that. The Daniels’ life philosophy seems to be that the universe and the structures of society are messy and meaningless; that there is no greater purpose to life and the only thing that holds together life itself are the small moments of kindness and connection between people, and it’s the only thing that makes life worth living.

Their viewpoint is a very atheistic vision of the universe and one the film posits, lending itself to despair and self-loathing. As the rapidly aging ethos of Rick and Morty has shown us, this sort of pop-nihilism has a short shelf life. Is “Wub A Lubba Dub Dub” still funny or fresh just eight years later? If Daniels really wanted to create a 2001 or Tree of Life for this particular moment of millennial existential angst, it is unclear how well it will age as our generation grows out of its youthful malaise and actually starts seeking meaningful adult ways to grasp the world.

The comparisons to 2001 or Tree of Life shouldn’t go unheeded though. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a miracle of a film; a personal story set against the cosmos that captures a humanist beauty in the desire for life to mean something and in the necessity to reject ultimate despair and suicide. This is the kind of fully realized cinematic masterpiece most directors only pull off once. It just so happens that it is also a movie with kung fu, heads exploding into confetti, evil IRS agents possessed by agents from another universe, a love story between two people with hotdogs instead of fingers, and a raccoon that controls a man’s hair that allows him to achieve his dream of becoming a hibachi chef.

+ Amazing editing and cinematography + Great comedy, action, and spectacle + Emotional personal story + Great performances + Fully realized story and execution

- Juvenile existential philosophy

The Bottom Line

Everything Everywhere All At Once is a masterpiece of comedy and spectacle and a beautiful movie about the meaning of life. Its musings may be somewhat adolescent, but as a realization of those ideas it is a masterpiece of visual storytelling and character writing!

Tyler Hummel

This is an anti Catholic movie

This is a good and revealing review, although I wonder if the take on existential philosophy as juvenile may be related to the author’s personal spiritual beliefs or educational experience (i.e., perhaps learning about existentialism in high school or college made him believe that existentialism is most suited to people of those ages). A viewer whose philosophy doesn’t begin and end with an anthropomorphized divine being might not believe that growing up means embracing more “meaningful adult ways to grasp the world.” Some people experience growing up in quite another way, such that–for us–growing up means questioning and ultimately discarding the religious identities and beliefs of our youth. I don’t mean that to sound any more condescending than dismissing existentialism as juvenile should sound, to be clear. Meanwhile, if ever there were a time for a movie about the apparent meaninglessness of the world around us and the importance of human connection as a way of finding and creating meaning in the midst of that, this is surely it–the party that was dominated by the Religious Right for decades is morphing into a fascistic insurgency that overturns democratic practices in favor of securing and consolidating political power. All of this in a supposedly free country.

Aside from the critique of this review, I think it’s important to point out one error: Michelle Yeoh is absolutely amazing, but she is not in The Mandalorian or The Book of Boba Fett. Ming-Na Wen plays Fennec Shand in those. I was surprised to learn that they were born about a year apart! They are both astounding actors and have aged more gracefully than I suppose I will have done by the time I’m their age!

The image of God is not always expressed through anthropomorphism in the Christian Bible. A Christian with a more fully developed theology understand that God the Father is both invisible and transcendent, despite the Bible using a lot of anthropomorphic imagery to help its readers to better grasp aspects of God’s nature. And sure, Christ’s incarnation was in a human form, and yes, we are made in God’s image, but that isn’t restricted to mere physical characteristics. The notion of God being like an old man with a beard living on a cloud within our own time and space most certainly exists within the realms of “juvenile philosophy”.

Fair response–in retrospect, I was flippant to talk about Christian faith as believing in an anthropomorphized deity–I see how that comes off as insulting, and I apologize for that–although I do think the nature of the Trinity and the hypostatic union means that there’s a greater connection between God and man than your response may perhaps acknowledge. But that wasn’t really my point; I just found your dismissal of existentialism to be itself insufficient. I do think Christians writ large in this country (I’m assuming this is an American blog) aren’t grappling with a lot of complexities that something like existentialism might help them get a better hold on. Even if a more agnostic existentialism could act as a bridge and help them acknowledge that there are ethical demands that they are gliding over when they make large decisions that change the lives of other people, that would be a welcome change in my mind. And for a juvenile philosophy, existentialism seemed to work for theistic philosophers like Kierkegaard and Buber. I do not find them or their musings adolescent in any way.

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NEWSLETTER SIGNUP

Everything everywhere all at once.

Starting with ordinary life, we venture into the multiverse. So does Evelyn, proprietor of a coin laundry who is challenged to live a variety of lives that might have been. Imaginative, exciting, bewildering – a wild and weird ride.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, US, 2021. Starring Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tallie Medel, Jenny Slate and Harry Shum Jr. Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. 137 minutes. Rated MA (Strong violence and crude sexual humour).

Judging by reviews, bloggers, box office, everyone, everywhere, is wanting to watch this film all at once. And, if you decide to see it, you are in for what they usually call a wild ride. Perhaps it might be better to say wild, weird ride.

Before we get to everywhere, there has to be a where. It is as prosaic as a coin laundry, managed by Evelyn (the ever-versatile Yeoh) and Waymond (former child star Quan). Evelyn is busy, busy, busy, Waymond worried, thinking of a divorce. They have a visit from their daughter, Joy (Hsu), who brings her girlfriend, Becky, exasperated by the hold her mother has over her. And, upstairs, there is Gong Gong, Evelyn’s father (Hong filming at age 80). So, prospects of a lively domestic drama – compounded when they go off to the IRS building with their tax documentation, encountering severe auditor Deidre (Curtis).

But, then the first part of the title comes up on screen, Everything. And, off we go, barely stopping for another two hours of screen time. The two Daniels, writers and directors Kwan and Scheinert, came into some prominence with their The Swiss Army Man , but they have made a number of short films and videos. They bring all their talents from these backgrounds, a non-stop kaleidoscope of ideas and images and music. (So far, the film has received one award – for Best Editing, Paul Rogers – heartily endorsed by this reviewer, wondering how it worked in the editing room with hundreds of short pieces to be edited coherently.) Coherently might be an overstatement but, as we watch the film, it is pacey, exciting, sometimes breathtaking, and unexpectedly works well.

So, off into the multiverse, relying on our familiarity with strange powers in the universe, gizmos for mind control, exciting special effects, and always the unexpected. At one stage, one of the characters remarks in an understatement, not typical of the whole dynamic of the film, ‘I’m a little lost’. And, this is an Odyssey in the multiverse for Evelyn, showing Yeoh’s multi-versatility, serious, dramatic, some martial arts, music, a bewildered mother facing so many of the possible lives she might have led, trying to work out which life she is in, especially with her husband turns up in all kinds of guises, the quiet man at the laundry, a dapper suit and tie gentleman, touches of the android.

And then there is Joy who is cast as the villain. As the film progresses, we come to understand this is a film about family reconciliation, regrets, Evelyn confronting Gong Gong as an evil power and memories of a harsh father, Joy and emotional rivalry.

After about an hour of this, the second part of the title comes up on screen, Everywhere. That is rather misleading because, in fact, we have already been Everywhere. And, it is more of the same, in the different universes, Evelyn’s sudden changing lives, encountering her family in different guises, conflict, resolution, possibilities.

And, by the way, the tax auditor turns up quite a deal, initially fighting with Evelyn, finally becoming reconciled and friends – and a pleasure to see Jamie Lee Curtis again.

When the third part of the title appears on screen, All at Once, it is almost the end of the film, quietening, reminding us that whatever our existential imaginations might conjure, whatever our cosmology of the universes, we live here, and have to live our lives in our here and now limitations.

Safe to say you won’t find many more films (any films?) like this.

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Everything Everywhere All At Once

Few things in life are certain besides death, taxes, and maybe the never-ending task that is doing laundry. At least that’s where the characters in writer/directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert , collectively known as Daniels, new film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” find themselves initially. That is, until they take an emotional, philosophical, and deeply weird trip through the looking glass into the multiverse and discover metaphysical wisdom along the way. 

In this love letter to genre cinema, Michelle Yeoh gives a virtuoso performance as Evelyn Wang, a weary owner of a laundromat under IRS audit. We first meet her enjoying a happy moment with her husband Waymond ( Ke Huy Quan ) and their daughter Joy ( Stephanie Hsu ). We see their smiling faces reflected in a mirror on their living room wall. As the camera literally zooms through the mirror, Evelyn’s smile fades, now seated at a table awash with business receipts. She’s preparing for a meeting with an auditor while simultaneously trying to cook food for a Chinese New Year party that will live up to the high standards of her visiting father Gong Gong ( James Hong , wiley as ever). 

On top of juggling her father’s visit and the tax audit, Evelyn’s sullen daughter Joy wants to bring her girlfriend Becky ( Tallie Medel ) to the party and her husband wants to talk about the state of their marriage. Just as Evelyn begins to feel overwhelmed by everything happening in her life she’s visited by another version of Waymond from what he calls the Alpha verse. Here humans have learned to “verse jump” and are threatened by an omniverse agent of chaos known as Jobu Tupaki. Soon, Evelyn is thrust into a universe-hopping adventure that has her questioning everything she thought she knew about her life, her failures, and her love for her family. 

Most of the action is set in an IRS office building in Simi Valley (which, as a Californian, had me in stitches), where Evelyn must battle IRS agent Diedre ( Jamie Lee Curtis , having the time of her life), a troop of security guards, and possibly everyone else she’s ever met. Production designer Jason Kisvarday crafts a seemingly endless cubicle-filled office where everything from the blade of a paper trimmer to a butt plug shaped auditor of the year awards become fair game in a battle to save the universe. 

Editor Paul Rogers’ breakneck pace matches the script’s frenetic dialogue, with layers of universes simultaneously folding into each other while also propelling Evelyn’s internal journey. Match cuts seamlessly connect the universes together, while playful cuts help emphasize the humor at the heart of the film. 

Born from choices both made and not made, each universe has a distinct look and feel, with winking film references ranging from “ The Matrix ” to “ The Fall ” to “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” to “In The Mood For Love” to “ Ratatouille .” Even Michelle Yeoh’s own legacy finds its way into the film with loving callbacks to her Hong Kong action film days and the wuxia classic “ Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon .” The fight sequences, choreographed by Andy and Brian Le , have a balletic beauty to them, wisely shot by cinematographer Larkin Seiple in wide shots allowing whole bodies to fill the frame.

Yeoh is the anchor of the film, given a role that showcases her wide range of talents, from her fine martial art skills to her superb comic timing to her ability to excavate endless depths of rich human emotion often just from a glance or a reaction. She is a movie star and this is a movie that knows it. Watching her shine so bright and clearly having a ball brought tears to my eyes more than once.  

Just as Evelyn taps into Yeoh’s iconography, facets of Waymond can be found throughout Quan’s unique career. The comic timing from his childhood roles as Data in “ The Goonies ” and Short Round in “ Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ” echoes in Evelyn’s nebbish husband. His work as a fight coordinator shows through in Alpha’s slick action hero capable of using a fanny pack to take out a group of attackers. Even his time as an assistant director to Wong Kar Wai on “2046” can be found in the universe where he plays the debonair one who got away. Quan tackles these variations with aplomb, bringing pathos to each and serving as a gentle reminder that there’s strength in kindness. 

As Evelyn and Waymond’s relationship ebbs and flows in iterations through the multiverses, it’s their daughter Joy who proves to be the lynchpin. In a true breakout performance from Stephanie Hsu, Joy represents a growing generational divide. Joy carries the weight of Evelyn’s fractured relationship with her grandfather and the disappointments of an American dream unattained. Her queerness as foreign to her mother as the country was when she herself first arrived. Her aimlessness a greater disappointment because of all that Eveyln sacrificed for her to have more options in life than she did. This pressure manifests in a rebellion so great it stretches beyond the multiverses into a realm where a giant everything bagel looms like a black hole ready to suck everyone into the void. 

If the void arises from the compounding of generational trauma, the Daniels posit that it can be reversed through the unconditional love passed down through those same generations, if we choose compassion and understanding over judgment and rejection. Chaos reigns and life may only ever make sense in fleeting moments, but it’s those moments we should cherish. Moments of love and camaraderie. Sometimes they happen over time. Sometimes they happen all at once. 

This review was filed from the premiere at the SXSW Film Festival. The film opens on March 25th.

Marya E. Gates

Marya E. Gates is a freelance film and culture writer based in Los Angeles and Chicago. She studied Comparative Literature at U.C. Berkeley, and also has an overpriced and underused MFA in Film Production. Other bylines include Moviefone, The Playlist, Crooked Marquee, Nerdist, and Vulture. 

• Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang
• Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang / Jobu Tupaki
• James Hong as Gong Gong
• Jonathan Ke Quan as Waymond Wang
• Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdra
• Anthony Molinari as Police - Confetti
• Jenny Slate as Big Nose
• Andy Le as Alpha Jumper - Bigger Trophy
• Brian Le as Alpha Jumper - Trophy
• Daniel Scheinert as District Manager
• Harry Shum Jr. as Chad
• Boon Pin Koh as Maternity Doctor
• Daniel Scheinert

Cinematographer

• Larkin Seiple
• Paul Rogers

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‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Review: It’s Messy, and Glorious

Michelle Yeoh stars as a stressed-out laundromat owner dragged into cosmic battle and genre chaos.

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By A.O. Scott

The idea of the multiverse has been a conundrum for modern physics and a disaster for modern popular culture. I’m aware that some of you here in this universe will disagree, but more often than not a conceit that promises ingenuity and narrative abundance has delivered aggressive brand extension and the infinite recombination of cliché. Had I but world enough and time, I might work these thoughts up into a thunderous supervillain rant, but instead I’m happy to report that my research has uncovered a rare and precious exception.

That would be “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. The filmmakers — who work under the name Daniels and who are best known for the wonderfully unclassifiable “Swiss Army Man” (starring Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse) — are happy to defy the laws of probability, plausibility and coherence. This movie’s plot is as full of twists and kinks as the pot of noodles that appears in an early scene. Spoiling it would be impossible. Summarizing it would take forever — literally!

But while the hectic action sequences and flights of science-fiction mumbo-jumbo are a big part of the fun (and the marketing), they aren’t really the point. This whirligig runs on tenderness and charm. As in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” or Pixar’s “Inside Out,” the antic cleverness serves a sincere and generous heart. Yes, the movie is a metaphysical multiverse galaxy-brain head trip, but deep down — and also right on the surface — it’s a bittersweet domestic drama, a marital comedy, a story of immigrant striving and a hurt-filled ballad of mother-daughter love.

At the center of it all is Evelyn Wang, played by the great Michelle Yeoh with grace, grit and perfect comic timing. Evelyn, who left China as a young woman, runs a laundromat somewhere in America with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Her life is its own small universe of stress and frustration. Evelyn’s father (James Hong), who all but disowned her when she married Waymond, is visiting to celebrate his birthday. An I.R.S. audit looms. Waymond is filing for divorce, which he says is the only way he can get his wife’s attention. Their daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), has self-esteem issues and also a girlfriend named Becky (Tallie Medel), and Evelyn doesn’t know how to deal with Joy’s teenage angst or her sexuality.

The first stretch of “Everything Everywhere All At Once” is played in a key of almost-realism. There are hints of the cosmic chaos to come, in the form of ominous musical cues (the score is by Son Lux) and swiveling camera movements (the cinematography is by Larkin Seiple) — but the mundane chaos of Evelyn’s existence provides plenty of drama.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once is a multiverse masterpiece

Daniels’ gripping, hilarious fantasy rivals The Matrix for game-changing effects and ambition

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by Tasha Robinson

It’s just about impossible to overemphasize the winking vulgarity of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s work together as the filmmaking collective Daniels. Their first feature film, Swiss Army Man , saw Paul Dano riding the farting corpse of Daniel Radcliffe to freedom and glory. Their best-known music video, for DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “ Turn Down for What ,” has Kwan feeling the beat so hard that his crotch smashes through walls and ceilings, infecting the breasts and asses of everyone who sees him with similar destructive energy. In their short film Interesting Ball , a cosmic event results in Scheinert being bodily sucked up into Kwan’s rectum. Their imagery is often joyously crude, and almost always startling, as they go places most creators wouldn’t dare.

But at the same time, it’s just as difficult to overemphasize the humanistic messages their work embraces. All these projects have people finding a strangely compelling, life-affirming power in the weird, gross places the world takes them. Swiss Army Man in particular is downright startling in the depth of its thoughts on cynicism, existentialism, and the meaning of human connection. Daniels’ latest project, the wild martial-arts multiverse fantasy Everything Everywhere All at Once , continues the trend with bloody murder-dildos, weaponized snot, and a fast-paced, hilarious anal-insertion war. But it’s also an achingly honest examination of despair, cynicism, anger, and ennui, all leading up to a message that’s all the more moving because before it asserts that life is worth living, it stares deep into the abyss, considering all the reasons why people might think otherwise.

Everything Everywhere ’s plot is best discovered in the moment, since it unfolds with a speed and verve that converts every new revelation into a fresh jolt of electricity. It’s enough to say that martial-arts superstar Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn Wang, an overstretched first-generation Chinese immigrant who owns a laundromat with her amiable husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), but barely has time for him or their frustrated adult daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) amid her day-to-day business struggles.

Among other things, the laundromat is being audited by humorless IRS agent Deirdre (a thoroughly disguised Jamie Lee Curtis), just as Evelyn is trying to impress her contemptuous visiting father, Gong Gong (James Hong). Meanwhile, Joy is trying to get Evelyn to acknowledge Joy’s girlfriend Becky, and Waymond is trying to get Evelyn to acknowledge him at all. When Evelyn is informed that she’s the key to fighting a vast evil that threatens the entire multiverse, her knee-jerk response is a distracted, exasperated “very busy today, no time to help you.”

When the threat catches up with her anyway, Everything Everywhere absolutely explodes into a series of creatively staged, comically over-the-top battles, a trip through different timelines and realities, and a staggeringly fast-paced series of personal explorations and revelations. The worlds Evelyn accesses are silly, sad, or strange, but none of them challenge her as much as the things she’s missed out on understanding about herself, her family, and her own past and future.

This is a movie that operates at the revved-up pace of stories like Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World or the recent animated Oscar nominee The Mitchells vs. the Machines , with the characters dragged breathlessly from one manic action sequence to the next. And yet Kwan and Scheinert keep finding small, quiet pockets where Evelyn can consider how she’s let herself and other people down, what she owes them, and what she can still offer them. For a movie that frequently throws Evelyn through realities and through walls and windows, it’s admirably focused on her well-being and her understanding of herself. And more than that, it’s focused on understanding how people inevitably limit their possible futures whenever they make choices, and how meaningless life can look after a series of choices goes wrong.

Everything Everywhere ’s multiverse is a remarkably flexible metaphor. It’s suitable for expressing some common frustrations the audience may relate to, about botched choices and wasted opportunity. But it’s just as suited for setting up a series of ridiculously kickass action sequences where literally anything is possible, because the characters aren’t bound by reality or causality. Kwan and Scheinert use that central idea of the multiverse to let their characters change bodies, costumes, skills, and settings on the fly, in ways that are visually dazzling and even overwhelming. But they set it all up with a clarity of thought and intention that make it surprisingly easy — and thrilling — to follow.

And even as they’re focusing on the big picture of a million universes collapsing around a single predatory evil, they’re just as aware of the smaller picture. So much of this story is told with tiny, telling details, like the way Joy nervously, wordlessly rolls her girlfriend’s sleeves down to cover her tattoos before trying to introduce her to Gong Gong. Or the way Waymond wistfully watches two older Chinese people at the IRS exchanging a demure kiss, and clearly longs for the same kind of tenderness in his life. Above all else, the Daniels trust their viewers to keep up with the story even when these kinds of grace notes are blurring by at warp speed, without explanation or underlining.

Everything Everywhere All at Once operates in a pop culture universe filled with familiar detritus for genre fans: a little Douglas Adams absurdity here, a visual quote or concept or line or mood cribbed from a wealth of other movies there. But while the Daniels quote 2001: A Space Odyssey in one scene and The Terminator in another, the movie’s biggest touchpoint is The Matrix , and not just because Evelyn discovers, to her surprise, that she knows kung fu.

In spite of a long series of Matrix sequels and re-quels , ripoffs and copycats, this is the first movie that authentically feels as surprising, daring, and outright game-changing as the Wachowskis’ 1999 original. The special effects, with that kaleidoscopic approach to shifting forms, look as radical now as bullet time was when it first arrived. The movie’s heady deconstructive philosophy of the universe feels as ambitious and radical as The Matrix ’s Gnostic take on reality did back then. And the martial-arts combat, carefully positioned between impressively choreographed and openly silly, feels as radical as it ever has in a Jackie Chan or Woo-Ping Yuen choreographed fight.

But where The Matrix is entirely caught up in its own sense of airless cool, in its humorless cybertech-Gothic aesthetic and love of kickass tableaux, Everything Everywhere has a sense of play and humor that helps make all the existential philosophy go down more smoothly. One effect of that warp-speed storytelling is that the film sometimes slingshots from pathos to punchlines, then back again, quickly enough to induce whiplash. But in this anything-goes environment, the shifts don’t feel like tonal contradictions. They just feel like an acknowledgment that life is simultaneously painful and absurd, and that the tension between the two helps define the sensation of being human.

The cast is just stellar. Ke Huy Quan — Short Round in 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Data in The Goonies — may be the biggest revelation in the cast, with a demanding role that has him switching affects and personalities repeatedly throughout the film, while maintaining that gentle longing throughout. But the Daniels demand a lot of all of their cast, and Yeoh, Hsu, Hong, and Curtis are up to the movie’s deeply weird challenges. (Jenny Slate and Glee ’s Harry Shum Jr. also show up in minor roles that no one’s likely to forget.) Like all of Kwan and Scheinert’s projects, Everything Everywhere is distinctive, both in its big ambitions and its subversive grossness. No one else makes movies like this. Possibly no one else would even want to.

That can be a little sad to consider — even in a multiverse of endless possibility, we’re unlikely to see a movie like this again. But at the same time, it means that every moment of Everything Everywhere is an exciting unknown. There’s no predicting where a Daniels project will travel in any given moment: up a character’s ass, or off into their wildest dreams. Sometimes it’s both at once. The miracle is that Scheinert and Kwan make it all feel natural, even when they’re going places no one else could imagine.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is now playing in major cities, with a nationwide rollout beginning on April 8.

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There's a multiverse of roads not taken in 'Everything Everywhere All at Once'

Justin Chang

Michelle Yeoh stars as a woman who suddenly develops the power to leap between parallel universes in the action-adventure-fantasy Everything Everywhere All at Once. A24 hide caption

Michelle Yeoh stars as a woman who suddenly develops the power to leap between parallel universes in the action-adventure-fantasy Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Multiverses are having something of a moment, popping up in recent movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home and upcoming ones like Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness . It's refreshing, then, to get a new multiverse movie this week that doesn't spring from the world of comic-book superheroes. It's called Everything Everywhere All at Once — an apt title for a movie that imagines the existence of thousands of alternate timelines, featuring thousands of alternate versions of ourselves. It was written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, also known as Daniels, who seem intent on topping the anything-goes audacity of Swiss Army Man , their 2016 comedy featuring Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse.

That strain of juvenile humor pops up frequently here: At one point, characters have to make inventive use of a trophy in order to jump from one universe to the next. But for all its gross sight gags and bizarre supernatural conceits, the movie has one pretty coherent purpose: to provide a dazzling actor's showcase for Michelle Yeoh .

In theaters this spring: multiverses, Bat-men, action stars and more

Yeoh plays Evelyn Wang, a Chinese American immigrant who lives in a cramped apartment with her husband, Waymond, played by Ke Huy Quan. It's a stressful time for the Wangs: Evelyn has her hands full bickering with their teenage daughter, Joy — a terrific Stephanie Hsu — and planning a birthday party for her ailing father, played by the great 93-year-old veteran James Hong. On top of that, the family business, a laundromat, is being audited by the IRS. The action really begins at the IRS office where Evelyn meets with their auditor, well played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who urges the Wangs to get their paperwork in order.

Evelyn might think she knows the story of her life, but she doesn't know the half of it. Through an extremely bizarre series of events, she learns about the existence of all those other universes, each with its own version of Evelyn. She also learns that she's the only person who can save the whole multiverse from destruction by some powerful force that has taken hold of her daughter, Joy. (As a story of conflict and reconciliation between an Asian mother and daughter, Everything Everywhere All at Once would make a nifty double bill with the current Pixar fantasy Turning Red .)

'Turning Red' confronts the messiness of adolescence with refreshing honesty

In order to defeat evil, Evelyn must repeatedly jump between her universe and others, sort of like a video-game avatar, and absorb crucial knowledge from those other Evelyns, all of whom represent different paths she could have taken through life. There's Evelyn the Hong Kong movie star, Evelyn the Peking opera singer and Evelyn the teppanyaki chef. Imagine a very long, unusually surreal Choose Your Own Adventure novel in which all the pages have been torn out and glued back together at random, and you'll have some sense of how this movie plays.

All this Matrix -style interdimensional hopping, plus the nonstop martial-arts action and in-your-face slapstick, makes Everything Everywhere All at Once an often frenetic viewing experience, and I checked out more than once the first time I saw it. But there are playful ideas beneath that busy surface. Notably, all those other Evelyns seem to be leading more fulfilling lives than Evelyn the unhappy wife, mom and laundromat owner. This is very much a movie about regret and disappointment, about the frustration of feeling that life's best opportunities have passed you by. It's no wonder that one of Evelyn's timelines pays homage to Wong Kar-wai 's In the Mood for Love , one of the greatest movies ever made about the road not taken.

Adding to that subtext is the casting of Michelle Yeoh, who's one of Asia's top stars but, despite some recent supporting roles in Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings , has never had the spectacular Hollywood career she's deserved. Directors Kwan and Scheinert are clearly trying to rectify that. This movie is as passionate and exhaustive a love letter to an actor as I've ever seen, and Yeoh's performance combines action, comedy, drama and emotion in ways she's never done before. Ke Huy Quan is working just as hard here as a neglected husband whose reserves of quiet strength Evelyn takes for granted. This is a big comeback role for Quan, whom you may remember as the '80s child star from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies.

For all its cosmic craziness, Everything Everywhere All at Once has a simple emotional message: It's about how the members of this immigrant family learn to cherish each other again. It's also about making peace with the life you've lived — and the ones you haven't. And that sort of sums up how I feel about this funny, messy, moving and often exasperating movie: There may be a better, more focused version of it in some other universe, but I'm still grateful for the one we've got.

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Everything everywhere all at once.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 29 Reviews
• Kids Say 71 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Weird, wonderful genre-busting adventure has some violence.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Everything Everywhere All at Once is a trippy sci-fi/fantasy martial arts adventure from the directors of the dark comedy Swiss Army Man . It centers on a middle-aged laundromat owner named Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), who discovers she must help save the multiverse during a…

Why Age 15+?

In addition to martial arts-inspired fight sequences between Evelyn and the forc

In a scene where all versions of Evelyn are quickly shown, a couple are making l

Occasional strong language includes "f--k," "f---ing," "holy s--t," "s--t," "stu

iPhone. Multiple references to movie Ratatouille, which Evelyn thinks has to do

Brief scenes show characters smoking cigarettes and marijuana and drinking.

Any Positive Content?

Encourages courage, empathy, honesty, self-control, teamwork. Stresses importanc

Movie centers a 50-something Chinese woman and her family in a way that isn't st

Evelyn isn't always likable, but she literally contains multitudes. She's brave,

Violence & Scariness

In addition to martial arts-inspired fight sequences between Evelyn and the forces from the other verses, several characters from the multiverse die and battle with weapons (usually found objects, from a fanny pack to a trophy, but also real weapons). Some violence is comic, some bloody and realistic.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

In a scene where all versions of Evelyn are quickly shown, a couple are making love, showing her face and naked shoulders (these are blink-and-miss moments). Evelyn and her husband (or different versions of him) kiss in a few scenes. Phallic sex toys are used in a fight scene. Suggestive joke about a sex toy (a "butt plug") that's used as a prize for IRS auditors; later, two different men use it to invoke their special skills. In one case, the man who uses it is naked from the waist down. His crotch area is obscured, but audiences can see his butt during the fight scenes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional strong language includes "f--k," "f---ing," "holy s--t," "s--t," "stupid," etc.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

iPhone. Multiple references to movie Ratatouille , which Evelyn thinks has to do with a raccoon instead of a rat.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Encourages courage, empathy, honesty, self-control, teamwork. Stresses importance of self-awareness, acceptance, resilience. Reminds viewers not to underestimate the power of laughter and small moments, that life is more about who you're with than what you have. Parent-child issues are a major theme. Story explores heavy topics such as depression, ennui, marital disappointment, and homophobia -- but with a heavy dose of levity, googly eyes, and hope.

Diverse Representations

Movie centers a 50-something Chinese woman and her family in a way that isn't stereotypical, despite the fact that they own a laundromat in the current multiverse. Joy is queer and has a girlfriend she's trying to include in family events. Strong multigenerational theme.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Role Models

Evelyn isn't always likable, but she literally contains multitudes. She's brave, strong-willed, and fierce. She recognizes her failures and asks for forgiveness. Waymond is goofy, optimistic, kind. Even when Evelyn is cruel or apathetic, Waymond remains devoted to their family. Joy is depressed but also loves her partner and wants to heal her unhealthy relationship. There's even a lot more to Deirdre, who's surprisingly patient and forgiving.

Parents need to know that Everything Everywhere All at Once is a trippy sci-fi/fantasy martial arts adventure from the directors of the dark comedy Swiss Army Man . It centers on a middle-aged laundromat owner named Evelyn ( Michelle Yeoh ), who discovers she must help save the multiverse during a routine trip to file her business taxes. Expect occasional strong language (mostly several uses of "f--k" and "s--t"), as well as plenty of violence, including stylized martial arts sequences that use both real and improvised weapons and include close-range brawling. There are a few deaths and a couple of bloody scenes. People kiss, there are super-quick shots of the main character making love (the focus is on her face or back), and you'll see fighting sex toys (both as weapons and skill amplifiers). Diverse representation includes a non-stereotypical Chinese American family and two women over 50 in central roles, as well as two women in a loving and supportive relationship. Families will have plenty to discuss after watching the movie, which is best suited for older teens and adults. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (29)
• Kids say (71)

Based on 29 parent reviews

Truly amazing movie, but not appropriate for children.

Extreme graphic violence, what's the story.

In EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, Evelyn Wong ( Michelle Yeoh ) and her husband, Waymond ( Ke Huy Quan ), have an important appointment to file their taxes at their local IRS office because their laundromat's business taxes are under review. Complicating the day is Evelyn's elderly father ( James Hong ), who's visiting from China, and her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), who tried to introduce her girlfriend to him, much to Evelyn's chagrin. On the way to see their IRS agent, Deirdre ( Jamie Lee Curtis ), with a shopping caddy full of receipts, Evelyn has a bizarre encounter with Waymond, who explains that at that moment, he's a Waymond from the multiverse and that she could be just the Evelyn he's looking for in an attempt to defeat a common villain who's about to destroy the universe with cult-like devotees. She's just one of many Evelyns across the multiverse, and in order to "verse jump" to attain her other selves' skills, she has to perform tasks both wacky and mundane, like switching shoes to the wrong feet, drinking half-and-half, giving herself four papercuts, and, in one case, sitting on a butt plug. Using all of her other versions' skills, Evelyn just might be able to keep the villain from sucking everyone and everything into the void.

Is It Any Good?

A crowd-pleasing, genre-bending adventure that's funny, dizzying, and infinitely memorable, this movie is also a lot . If the screenplays for Kung Fu Hustle , The Matri x , Being John Malkovich , Spaceballs , Kill Bill , and Spider-Man: No Way Home were blended together, the result would approximate this movie. There's much to keep track of, and the filmmakers ingeniously wrap layers and layers onto what sounds like a boring framing story: A 50-something Chinese couple tries to refile their taxes on the same day they throw a party at their laundromat to impress their elderly father/father-in-law. But there's nothing remotely boring or predictable about what happens throughout the day, as Evelyn expands her consciousness through the silliest of tasks to psychically visit other versions of herself based on all the "sliding door" decisions she's made. The cast is all praise-worthy, but particular kudos go to Yeoh, Quan, and Curtis for their joyously watchable performances. Hsu and Hong are also fabulous as the melancholy (and ironically named) Joy and the stubborn Chinese father who each have a complicated relationship with Evelyn.

Speaking of joy, it's best to see this film knowing only that it's worth seeing. While there aren't a lot of huge twists, there's a definite nonsensical and communal energy to it all, and it's ideal to watch it surrounded by laughing, cringing, and even crying moviegoers. One multiverse sight gag worth teasing involves a Ratatouille -like conceit, except the animal is a raccoon, not a rat. That one features Harry Shum Jr. as the Linguini-like chef at a Japanese steakhouse where one of the multi-Evelyns works. It's not only hilarious, but, like the movie, surprisingly touching. Parent-child issues are a major theme, and the story explores heavy topics such as depression, ennui, marital disappointment, and homophobia, but with a heavy dose of levity, googly eyes, and hope.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Everything Everywhere All at Once . When is it funny, and when is it dark? What's the impact of it, and why is it necessary to the story?

Discuss mental health and family dynamics and how they're depicted in the movie. What do the main characters learn from their experiences?

Which of the multiverse Evelyns was your favorite? How did all of the Evelyns' skills help the main Evelyn fulfill her destiny? How about the various Waymonds?

Discuss the importance of racial, ethnic, and generational representation in popular culture . Can you think of other movies that center Asian characters or older women?

How do the characters demonstrate courage , empathy , self-control , and teamwork ? What makes those important character strengths ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 25, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : June 7, 2022
• Cast : Michelle Yeoh , Ke Huy Quan , Stephanie Hsu
• Directors : Dan Kwan , Daniel Scheinert
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Asian actors
• Studio : A24
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : STEM , Sports and Martial Arts
• Character Strengths : Courage , Empathy , Self-control , Teamwork
• Run time : 132 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some violence, sexual material
• Awards : Academy Award , Golden Globe - Golden Globe Award Winner
• Last updated : June 20, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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What to watch next.

Being John Malkovich

Kung Fu Hustle

Swiss Army Man

Turning Red

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Cult classics, indie films, related topics.

• Self-control
• Sports and Martial Arts

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Review: ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ is, for better or worse, exactly that

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At the beginning of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the camera creeps slowly toward a circular mirror — an apt start for a movie that will soon whoosh its characters through one looking glass after another. Amid all the whooshing, though, try to hold on to the image of that circle, which isn’t the easiest thing to do amid all the sights and sounds, frenzied fight scenes and grotesque sight gags that Daniels — a.k.a. the writing-directing duo of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert ( “Swiss Army Man” ) — have crammed into their latest surreal head-spinner of a movie.

Still, they do leave a trail of metaphysical breadcrumbs, or perhaps I should say bagel crumbs. That circle will recur throughout the movie, first in the glass door of a washing machine and later as an extremely literal “everything bagel,” a giant cosmic doughnut that has been sprinkled with flecks of every piece of matter that has ever existed. Is this bagel the circle of life or perhaps the Circle of Eternal Return, a concept that pops up in the work of the German novelist Michael Ende and the Ukrainian artist Valerii Lamakh? It feels more like a black hole, destined to swallow up everything and everyone because, at the end of the day, as one character puts it, “nothing matters.”

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Does your head hurt yet, or just your soul? Running a funny, messy, moving, grotesque, sometimes exhilarating and often exasperating 140 minutes, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” can be a pain and knows it; it might also be its own cure. Crammed with ideas, jokes, laments, non sequiturs and some terrific actors you’ve seen before (if not nearly enough), the movie comes at you like a warm hug wrapped in a kung fu chop: It’s both a sweet, sentimental story about a Chinese American family and a wild, maximalist sensory assault. In the end, its many swirling parts unite around a remarkably coherent purpose: to provide a rare and dazzling showcase for a megawatt performer who scowls, gasps, punches, kicks, leaps, flips, soars and finally transcends.

That would be Michelle Yeoh, who has long been one of Asia’s top action stars but — from early breakthroughs (“Tomorrow Never Dies,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) through prestige disappointments (“Memoirs of a Geisha,” “The Lady”) to a few high-profile supporting turns (“Crazy Rich Asians,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”) — has never enjoyed the spectacular Hollywood career she’s long deserved. (Even “Everything Everywhere,” originally conceived for Jackie Chan before Daniels decided to reconceive the lead as a woman, nearly eluded her as well.) The agony of what might have been haunts Yeoh’s stardom, and it also looms over her Evelyn Wang, a stressed-out, desperately unfulfilled woman who’s staring down the barrel of the IRS as the action gets underway.

A messy tax audit of her family-run laundromat isn’t the only thing weighing on Evelyn. She’s busy planning a birthday party for her overbearing dad (the great 93-year-old veteran James Hong), from whom she’s hiding the fact that her teenage daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), is a lesbian. (And has a girlfriend, played by Tallie Medel.) Evelyn also has a patient, long-suffering husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), whom she’s so used to neglecting that she hasn’t even noticed he’s filing for divorce. Then, during a visit to their cranky auditor, Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn is suddenly yanked out of her body — whoosh! — and transported into that of another Evelyn, and then another Evelyn, and then another Evelyn, all of them occupying their own distinct parallel universes.

Welcome, in other words, to the latest cinematic incarnation of the multiverse, in which an infinite number of parallel timelines suddenly converge in a maelstrom of controlled chaos. That concept, a longtime science fiction staple, has been repopularized of late in the last couple of Spider-Man features (and the forthcoming “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”), which makes it all the more welcome to see an iteration that doesn’t spring from a corporate-branded property. In this one, the multiverse has come under threat from an unstoppable evil force known as Jobu Tobacky, and Evelyn — despite or perhaps because of her utterly unremarkable existence — is the only one capable of defeating it. To do this, she will have to jump repeatedly between universes and, like a video-game paladin shifting fighting styles at will, absorb the special powers of her many, many fellow Evelyns.

These include, among others, Evelyn the Peking opera singer, Evelyn the Hong Kong movie star (cue a blink-and-you-miss-it shot of Yeoh attending the “Crazy Rich Asians” premiere), Evelyn the woman with hot dogs for fingers (don’t ask) and Evelyn the teppanyaki chef. Charmingly, a lot of these adventures seem to hark back to various late-’90s antecedents: Like Neo in “The Matrix,” Evelyn is a messiah-in-training who must learn to absorb powerful fighting techniques in the trippiest possible way. And like the indecisive heroines of “Sliding Doors” and “Run Lola Run,” though to a vastly more insane degree, she must entertain multiple possible versions of her own story — all in a movie that plays at times like a very long, very surreal “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel from which the pages have been torn out and then glued back together at random.

I will leave the actual mechanics of Evelyn’s interdimensional portal-hopping for you to discover; you’ll learn most of them from Waymond, who, through one of this multiverse’s many quirks, frequently doubles as an exposition delivery machine. Suffice it to say that the constantly evolving rules often require the characters to do gross, painful and embarrassing things, like inflict paper cuts on themselves, make photocopies of their nether-regions and use trophies as butt plugs. Kwan and Scheinert clearly haven’t abandoned the giddy anal fixations of “Swiss Army Man,” a.k.a. the movie that starred Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse. (And they say auteurism is dead.)

The directors’ signature mix of frenetic silliness and disarming sincerity unlocks something especially fresh and exciting in Yeoh. Given how often she’s been typecast as a figure of serene, Zen-like composure, it’s a tonic to see her play someone who so conspicuously doesn’t have her act together, a woman with blood on her brow, anxiety in her gaze and a voice that sometimes cracks as it rises several octaves above her usual register. (She’s an oddity, and also an auditee.) The result is as passionate and exhaustive a love letter as any filmmakers have ever written to their star, and Yeoh answers it by fusing action, comedy and drama with a grace and dexterity she’s seldom been given the chance to muster.

As it happens, Evelyn isn’t the only character popping up in multiple dimensions here, and Yeoh isn’t the only actor to turn multitasking into art. Curtis brings just the right demented comic edge to her many faces of Deirdre (most of them scowling, some of them sympathetic), while Hsu piercingly registers Joy’s sadness even amid a flurry of outlandish wardrobe changes (courtesy of costume designer Shirley Kurata). Most poignant of all is Quan, whom you’ll recognize as the ’80s child star who played Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies.” His subsequent, yearslong rejection by an industry that didn’t know what to do with him is subtly referenced — and even rectified — in his performance as a husband and father with his own easily underestimated reserves of strength.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is thus a story of redemption and reconciliation, as sweet and sentimental at its core as it is deliriously busy on the surface. (The vibrant cinematography is by Larkin Seiple, the hyperaccelerated editing by Paul Rogers and the madly inventive production design by Jason Kisvarday.) As a drama of Asian mother-daughter conflict, it would make an appropriate double bill with Pixar’s current fantasy “Turning Red.” As a movie about the roads not taken, it taps into the inexhaustible wellspring of romantic melancholy that is Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” explicitly saluted in Evelyn’s most wistful timeline. Here, it isn’t just an irretrievable past that keeps flashing before her eyes; it’s all the tantalizing possibilities of a better, more fulfilling and meaningful life than the one she’s been leading.

And it is this very insistence on endless, simultaneous possibilities that leads me to render a verdict on “Everything Everywhere All at Once” that may seem inconclusive at best and craven at worst, but which I very much offer up in this movie’s endearing, maddening spirit. Is it a visionary triumph or a gaudy, overstuffed folly? Does it bog down in numbing repetition or discover, within that repetition, an aesthetic and philosophical energy all its own? Not to advance a circular argument, but yes to all of the above. I don’t know if this movie fully works in this universe, but I suspect it might in the next.

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

In English, Mandarin and Cantonese with English subtitles Rating: R, for some violence, sexual material and language Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes Playing: Starts March 25 in general release

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EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

"chaos leads to nowhere".

What You Need To Know:

Miscellaneous Immorality: Mother shames her daughter, and the daughter is completely self-absorbed.

More Detail:

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is an eccentric, deranged journey of a disillusioned Chinese immigrant, who runs a failing laundromat and is in trouble with the IRS, and who must save the world by jumping around the multiverse to find the best version of herself. The movie contains some Christian and redeeming elements such as the importance of family, the power of good virtues and self-mastery. The main character risks her life to save her daughter. Her husband is the epitome of kindness, patience and generosity. However, the movie is marred with pervasive graphic violence, some sexual violence, including a few brief scenes involving bondage, some strong obscenities, and politically correct commentary on homosexual unions. The movie’s excessively bizarre and irrational behavior, along with the false ideology of a sentient multiverse, gives the feeling of almost two and a half hours of a drug-induced psychotic episode. Media-wise moviegoers will want to pass on this one.

Evelyn Wang is an anxiety ridden, disgruntled Chinese immigrant who runs a laundromat. She continuously laments over her poor life choices. She believes she should have followed the advice of her overbearing father to not marry her husband, Waymond. The ever patient Waymond has finally had enough abuse and decides to serve his wife with divorce papers. Meanwhile, their daughter, Joy, follows the neurotic Evelyn around the laundromat trying to make her invite her lesbian partner to a party Evelyn is planning for her very traditional, strict and demanding father. Joy refuses to respect her mother’s wishes of not wanting to upset her father in his old age. Evelyn avoids closeness with Joy with her own busyness. She also dismisses Joy and calls her fat.

Evelyn and Waymond are on their way to report to the battle-axe Deidre at the IRS, a comical role played by Jamie Lee Curtis. In the elevator, Evelyn meets “Alpha Waymond,” a version of her husband who informs her that there’s an imbalance in the universe. She’s the only one who can save the world. However, Evelyn has no skills or talent. For each poor decision she’s made in this life, a better version of herself branched off in a parallel universe. So, now, Evelyn must travel to other universes to connect with better versions of herself to find the skills to fight the great evil, which has become personified in her daughter, Joy.

Joy, Waymond and the villains “verse jump” by acting out in bizarre and grotesque ways. These actions range from romantically professing love to a woman trying to kill her, feeding her father his own nose matter, and jumping on large objects to lodge them in the anal cavity. In one universe, Evelyn is a champion kung fu fighter. As she connects with this version of herself, she gruesomely fights her way through the multiverse. Though instructed to kill her daughter, Joy, to save the world, Evelyn will fight anything and everything to save her.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is true to its name, but the movie incorporates too much material, which ultimately results in chaos. There are some funny moments, but the constant farcical elements will turn off some viewers. Michelle Yeoh, as Evelyn Wang, gives an excellent performance. Also, Jamie Lee Curtis gives a noticeably comical performance of the IRS specialist, Deirdre.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE contains some touching Christian, redemptive and morally uplifting content promoting the importance of family and the value of virtue and self-control. For example, the main character risks her life to save her daughter, and her husband is the epitome of kindness, patience and generosity. However, the movie has a strong false, pagan worldview overall promoting the idea of an infinite multiverse. It also sees the universe as the living creator/power of itself that wills good or bad for humanity. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is also marred with some bloody violence, sexual violence (including a few brief scenes involving bondage), at least 20 obscenities, some marijuana use, and lots of crude, lewd content, including politically correct homosexual references. The excessively bizarre and irrational behavior in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE and weird worldview ultimately gives the feeling of almost two and a half hours of a drug-induced psychotic episode. Media-wise moviegoers will want to pass on the pervasive abhorrent content in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once Perfects Optimistic Nihilism

In 2012, the legendary Twitter account @horse_ebooks tweeted, “ Everything happens so much. " Despite bordering on nonsense, the message singularly captured the feeling of exhaustion that comes with trying to keep up with the flood of inputs that demand attention every day. It is in this place of chaotic resignation that Everything Everywhere All at Once steps in to offer clarity.

Everything Everywhere , the latest from the directing duo known as Daniels ( Swiss Army Man ), centers on Evelyn (played in dozens of incarnations by Michelle Yeoh), a woman who's just trying to file her taxes to keep the laundromat she owns with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), running. Her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), wants to bring her girlfriend to the birthday party for Evelyn's elderly father (James Hong), who's old-fashioned and won't approve of their relationship. All the while, Waymond is struggling to find the space to tell Evelyn that he wants a divorce. It's frenetically told but also unfolds like a perfectly relatable story about the chaos of life and the feeling of being pulled in a thousand directions at once. And then the multiverse opens up.

Stories about multiverses are myriad in popular culture. For proof, one need look no further than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Ironically, Daniels—Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert— turned down the opportunity to work on Loki , which dealt heavily in multiversal possibilities .) But rarely are they explored as in-depth and meaningfully as they are in Everything Everywhere . Evelyn's foray into her multiverse gives her perspective, a chance to reconcile her boring job, whiny husband, and troublesome daughter with versions of her life in which she's a hibachi chef, movie star, and—in a twist—a literal rock. Equal parts soul-searching and sci-fi, Kwan and Scheinert's movie takes all of this to its emotional and logical extremes. But instead of arriving at some nihilistic conclusion, it poses a more optimistic question: If there are no rules, no consequences, then why not go wild?

Absurdity courses through every scene. Navigation of the multiverse involves performing silly, random actions like eating lip balm or accepting an award, and each time Evelyn or a member of her family makes a decision, another timeline branches off. The point is that seemingly small or inconsequential decisions can lead to radically different outcomes. Throughout Everything Everywhere , characters perform ridiculous actions in order to gain new abilities, but in the end it's the minuscule and unlikely ones that ultimately change the course of the party Evelyn throws for her father. 

At the onset, it's easy to see why Evelyn is frustrated with her job, her husband, her daughter. But after seeing the many ways their lives could have unfolded, the countless possibilities of who they could have become, a deeper truth emerges. If nothing matters, then the only thing that can matter is what you choose. The multiverse might contain an infinite amount of pain and heartbreak, but it also contains an infinite amount of creativity, passion, beauty, and connection. 

Through that lens, cynicism itself gets distilled down to just another choice. It's not naive or ignorant to choose to value little moments, small acts of kindness. In a world where so much can feel insignificant, choosing cruelty or hopelessness has no greater value than opting for kindness and empathy. If anything, choosing destruction only accelerates entropy.

Everything Everywhere doesn't just reject cynicism, it refutes it. And that might be its most defining value. The film takes the concept of an infinite multiverse—and by extension, the vast, overwhelming nature of our own experiences—and examines it both critically and compassionately. It, quite literally at times, stares into the void and doesn't blink as the void stares back.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

Where to watch.

Watch Everything Everywhere All at Once with a subscription on Max, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

Led by an outstanding Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once lives up to its title with an expertly calibrated assault on the senses.

Incredible acting, stunning visuals, and a really deep, powerful story -- Everything Everywhere All at Once has it all.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Daniel Scheinert

Michelle Yeoh

Evelyn Wang

Stephanie Hsu

Ke Huy Quan

Waymond Wang

Movie Clips

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

  R | Comedy | 2 HR 19 MIN | 2022

An exhausted Chinese American woman (Oscar® winner Michelle Yeoh) becomes an unlikely hero while traversing the multiverse in this big-hearted Best Picture®-winning sci-fi action adventure.