HipsterZOMBIEJoint Movie Review: Everything Everywhere All At Once
HipsterZOMBIEJoint Experience
3 min read
Star Wars. The Matrix. Avatar. Every generation has a film that comes along and just completely changes the idea of what movies are and can be. Everything Everywhere All At Once is that film for this generation.
It takes a lot to impress audiences or to show them something new these days when we are all inundated with countless comic book and franchise films. But All At Once delivers that and more. Headlined by an all Chinese cast, this film delves deep into the concept of the multiverse in a way Marvel Studios and the DCEU can only dream of.
The film written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as “Daniels”), who co-produced it with the Russo brothers. It stars Michelle Yeoh as a Chinese-American woman being audited by the Internal Revenue Service who discovers that she must connect with parallel universeversions of herself to prevent a powerful being from causing the destruction of the multiverse. Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, and Jamie Lee Curtis appear in supporting roles. The film has been described as a “swirl of genre anarchy”and features elements of black comedy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts film and animation.
The film is completely bonkers with how it interprets the multiverse and how to traverse it. It’s unique funny, absurd, and heartwarming.
Evelyn Quan Wang is a Chinese-American woman who runs a struggling laundromat with her husband, Waymond. Tensions are high due to the laundromat being audited by the IRS. Additionally, Waymond is trying to give Evelyn divorce papers; Evelyn’s demanding father, Gong Gong, has just arrived from China; and Evelyn’s daughter, Joy, has been trying to get her mother to accept her girlfriend, Becky.
While at the IRS building for a meeting with IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdre, Waymond’s personality changes when his body is briefly taken over by Alpha Waymond, a version of Waymond from a universe he calls the “Alphaverse”. Alpha Waymond explains to Evelyn that many parallel universes exist, since every choice made creates a new universe. The people of the Alphaverse, led by the late Alpha Evelyn, developed “verse-jumping” technology that allows people to access the skills, memories, and body of their parallel universe counterparts by fulfilling specific conditions. The multiverse is being threatened by Jobu Tupaki, formerly Alpha Joy. Her mind was splintered after Alpha Evelyn pushed her to extensively verse-jump; Jobu Tupaki now experiences all universes at once and can verse-jump and manipulate matter at will. With her godlike power she has created a black hole-like “everything bagel” that can potentially destroy the multiverse.
I don’t want to delve too much more into spoilers here mainly because this is a flick I’m going to have to watch a couple more times to fully grasp its awesomeness. But basically the story is about family and how multiverse versions of ourselves could be famous, super rich, or Martial Arts Masters, but at the end of the day nothing can beat the love of a family unit.
Whether it’s the amazing fight choreography, googly eyes, talking rocks, or the hot dog fingers, All At Once is a visual feast that takes viewers on a journey unlike any they will go in with another film this year.
Michelle Yeoh puts this film on her back and Carries it from beginning to end.
That and seeing Jamie Lee Curtis Dropkick Michelle Yeoh is just a hilarious sight to see.
In conclusion All At Once is helluva flick with a diverse cast and uncanny visuals that will stay with you long after the credits roll. HipsterZOMBIEJoint Experience highly recommends checking out Everything Everywhere All At Once.
