Pure cinema.
Much more marvellous than any Marvel movie, EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is a monumentally original film that playfully mixes genre within a parallel universe plot device.
In spite of some audiences resistance to the fantastic in film, I doubt anyone could emerge from EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE disputing the truth and strength of its title and unaware of what just hit them was some kind of masterpiece.
One cannot help but marvel at the majesty of this movie which might so easily have been a mess but turns out a triumph of imagination and wit.
There is a virtuosity of vision, it embraces grandeur and minutiae in one great encompassing grasp.
Writer directors, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who made the audacious Swiss Army Man, about a castaway and a cadaver that mixed flatulence with philosophy, have carved out an extraordinary thrill ride and mind fuck and chiselled it with crystalline wit that provokes laughter and thought.
Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn Wang, who operates a laundry with her husband Waymond. Her world seems full of drudgery, with a marriage that’s lost its zing, a fractured relationship with her daughter and father, and a business that is all but washed up.
Suddenly she is whisked into the multiverse with a mission to save the world at large and her own. The quest is an obstacle course through which Evelyn careens through a kaleidoscope of alternative lives she could have lived.
Friends become foes, allies become nemesis, and Evelyn must be on her toes as her fingers become hot dogs, her father favours infanticide, and her daughter morphs into a monumental menace.
Joining the phenomenal Michelle Yeoh is veteran film performer, James Hong and the brilliant Jamie Lee Curtis.
So much of current so called tent pole movies make do as ponderous cartoon. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE elevates the spectacular to an elite entertainment. Unmissable.
