Cinemavenger
The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The concept of the multiverse isn't new, but goddamn if it's not the hottest topic since goth went mall mainstream. How terrifically trendy is the multiverse right now? The big guys, (Marvel, DC) have already gone all in on it. And a little indie that could, featuring a nearly all-Asian cast and more quirk then a season of New Girl, just won pretty much every Oscar by leaning all the way into multiversal madness.
Everything Everywhere All at Once snagged Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay, and probably Best Buy, Best Western, and Best On Set Massages. For being a movie that maybe five people who weren't: 1) in it, 2) film students, or 3) Asian fetishists saw in theaters, it came out of absolutely nowhere to make the Oscars its bitch.
Do all those Academy Awards mean that it's an amazing flick? In no fucking way whatsoever. If you haven't been paying attention, winning an Oscar correlates to how good a movie is about as well as being allergic to shellfish correlates to how likely you are to win the lottery.
Still, assuming you don't hate Asian people, high concept sci-fi, kung fu fighting, or silly sentimentality, Everything Everywhere All at Once is actually a pretty darn good time. It may be less than the sum of its parts, but it's a country fucking mile ahead of most of what gets spewed up on multiplex screens year in and year out.
Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh "Joe"), her husband Waymond (Ke Huy "Short Round" Quan), and their daughter Joy (Stephanie "The Marvelous Mrs." Hsu), live over the laundromat that they own and run. Evelyn and Waymond's marriage is on the rocks. An IRS agent (Jamie "General" Lee Curtis") is breathing down their necks. Joy feels all Gen Z unseen. And Evelyn is kind of a cunt.
Suddenly, Evelyn's eyes are opened to the multiverse, and she's able not only to see herself in other realities but to access those other Evelyns' memories and skills, which comes in handy as she tries to stop Jobu, the villain of the piece, from being all villainy.
The too pat ending will leave you either warm and fuzzy or weary and wistful, but at least it'll make you feel something, and how many movies succeed in doing that these days?
April 7, 2024