June Monthly Review: Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) (Patreon)

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) made me feel things about rocks, piñatas, hot dogs, and bagels. It is the best new movie I've seen in years. 

There is no one plot summary of Everything Everywhere All at Once that does it justice. If you focus on the science fiction elements jumping between parallel universes, you fail to bring up the exploration of familial and romantic bonds. If you dwell on the hot dog hands you miss the healing relationship between mother and daughter. To use a joke that has almost certainly been made an infinite amount of times, this movie contains everything from every movie all at once, and to their eternal credit, pulls it off. 

But how? How do they take all these disparate elements and pull them together? Everything Everywhere All at Once could only have been directed by writers Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. No one else could have looked at their script and understood the "vision". It would be easy to say the rest of this review is just listing each department and saying they excelled, but for the sake of learning something, let's try and identify how each part of this movie succeeds in order to understand just what makes it so outstanding. 

The first and most obvious stop is with the cast and their performances. Everyone in this film is giving their best day on set in every scene. Stephanie Hsu switches personalities on a dime, changing everything from her speech patterns to the way she holds herself, playing a character who has felt the unfeelable in a way that is at once relatable and alien. Ke Huy Quan made the audience immediately fall in love with this goofy, glass-half-full husband, to the point where I felt real joy that he was allowed to end the film as that version of Waymond, and not his fanny-pack wielding action persona. The side characters are all played to the nines, and I would be remiss if I did not point out Randy Newman was brought in to voice Raccacconie (a name I have been struggling to find the correct spelling for). The real Atlas of this film however is it's leading lady, Evelyn, played to perfection by Michelle Yeoh. Yeoh was able to leverage her long carrier in martial arts flicks and more to bring real lived-in weight to the famous alternate-Evelyns, while still bringing a new performance to screen as the exhausted, ever-dreaming laundromat owner. Her supporting cast isn't slacking, but Yeoh still manages to stand out from the crowd, and her efforts elevate the performances of everyone she acts against. 

Outside of performance, visually Everything Everywhere All at Once is a love-letter to filmmaking. The cinematography and editing work together to seamlessly carry us across the multiverse alongside Evelyn, while quickly establishing the rules of whatever universe we were in. Whether the romantic yet moody lighting of the hot dog-handed reality or the simple, natural presentation of a pair of rocks just, being, the camera, lighting, and cuts, worked together to make sure we too were just, being. 

This is not to say the other departments weren't pulling their weight. Hsu's costumes and hair/make-up were a feast for the eyes, contrasting with how straight the IRS office is played. It would have been trivial for the art department to take this film's wild premise as an excuse to look silly, but instead they chose to use a saturated but moody color palette, keeping the explosion of color all within a cohesive boundary.

I could continue to praise every department on Everything Everywhere All at Once, but I think it's better to finish with what really made this movie stand out for me. It wasn't the fabulous performances. It wasn't the gorgeous visuals. It wasn't even the interesting premise. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a movie that made me feel human. Despite all the trappings and all the chaos, at the end of the day it was the connection between Joy and her mother in all of its complexity and messiness that had me in tears. It was Waymond confessing he would be happy doing laundry and taxes with Evelyn that made me forget I was watching a screen and not a real alleyway confession. It was the brief moments of connection between Gong Gong and Becky, between Deirdre and Evelyn, and yes, between Chad and Raccacconie that left me walking out of the theater with a feeling of profound joy. This movie wants you to know that the universe is cold and uncaring, but that that doesn't matter, because for every bagel there is a googly eye, and for every person, there are the relationships we form to give our lives meaning and happiness. 

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) made me feel things about family, love, connection, and the human experience. It is the best new movie I've seen in years.

10/10 Googly Eyes