Director: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis
Have I Seen it Before: No…
Did I Like It: Holy shit.
There was always a chance that I would go into the film overhyped. There was always a chance that, along with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), and the one-day-maybe-soon release of The Flash, the market might be a bit too flooded with multiverse films in a market that where audience’s attention spans are dwindling by the minute. There was always a chance that Jackie Chan (the fool) would have taken the offer, or Ke Huy Quan (who’s been great his whole damn life; he could have been great for years!)had stayed retired from acting.
Thankfully, that is not our universe.
It’s almost laughable how superior this film is to the Strange sequel (a film I ultimately kind of liked). There have been plenty of instances in parallel development in big Hollywood films experiencing nearly concurrent releases, but I struggle to find two films of such sharply levels of quality. Sure, Deep Impact (1998) and Armageddon (1998) have different priorities as films, but it isn’t like one of those movies beat the other one up and stole their lunch money.
I hate to contribute further to the possibility of overhyping, but if this film isn’t the best movie of the year, then 2022 will prove to be the greatest year for movies in some time. It was impossible not to love Michelle Yeoh before this, but while we all may have thought we appreciated her enough in years past, we haven’t been doing nearly enough. This doesn’t even begin to cover the absolute wonder that is the ego-less commitment to the moment of latter-day Jamie Lee Curtis.
Even if the film wasn’t one of the most chaotic, imaginative things to have ever been forged, it’s Herculean task of turning nihilism into a joyful, beautiful thing is enough to make it astonishing. Only a film with one foot in several different realities can be 100% clever plot and 100% heart at the same time.
By the time you’ve read this, Everything Everywhere All at Once will be available via VOD. You have no excuse. You should not live in a universe where you haven’t seen this film.