CAST: Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Kurtis, KE Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, James Hong, Sunita Mani,

DIRECTED BY: Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan ( collectively called the Daniels)

Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh at maybe her all-time best), runs a struggling laundromat with her overly-optimistic husband Waymond (an equally fantastic Ke Huy Quan who first rose to fame as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). 

Together, they are trying to fend off IRS auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdra, played with a jobsworth sneer and a frightening fringe by Jamie Lee Curtis and she accuses the couple of tax fraud.

Over the years, Evelyn (who swoons over musical romances on TV – a delectable Sunita Mani) has harboured dreams of being everything from a singer or a novelist to a therapist. But in real life she’s consumed with worries about her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), and her visiting father, Gong Gong (James Hong), too scared to tell the latter that his granddaughter is gay, and too uptight to tell the former that she loves her anyway.

Evelyn’s life irrevocably changes when a version of Waymond tells Evelyn that she is just one of many Evelyns, yet she’s the only one that can defeat a powerful villain named Jobu Tupaki, who could destroy all the universes (and there are a lot of universes).

Daniels turns Everything Everywhere All At Once a frenetic and truly ridiculous barrage of probabilities and multiverse jumping. Anything you can imagine, Daniels has also thought of and thrown into this film. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a bombardment of hot dog fingers, googly-eyes, Wong Kar-Wai homages, fanny packs incredibly strong pinkie fingers, talking rocks, the Nine Days song, raccoons, the guy who played Santa Claus in I Think You Should Leave, and IRS audit awards in the shape of rectal plugs.

The brilliance of Everything Everywhere All At Once is the remarkable amount of ideas Daniels can cram into this story without it becoming an absurd mess.

There are no restraints, no stops, no idea too wild that doesn’t make it into Everything Everywhere. Everything is a possibility.

In Swiss Army Man, the debut film from Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (collectively and fitting known as Daniels), Hank (Paul Dano) and his corpse friend Manny (Daniel Radcliffe) shoot out of a river propelled on the power of Manny’s farts. As they fly through the air, they sing a song to each other that goes: “You just have to remember that we’re all here for a purpose, and the Universe picks its time. Everything, everywhere matters to everything.”

This film is an extremely touching story about the paths we take in our lives, the paths that we didn’t take, and how they lead us to exactly where we need to be. Very karmic. Given that the Daniels are the guys made a guy’s friendship with a dead body a truly moving story, they lead the movie into exhilarating possibilities.

 Performances by Yeoh, Quan, and Hsu are brilliant. With so many versions of these characters running around this multiverse of madness, these three are able to meet any challenge that the Daniels throw at them—whether a star-crossed lover-type story, a Pixar parody, or some of the most entertaining fight scenes in recent memory. As the grounding force of Everything Everywhere, Yeoh is simply incredible, as no matter what incarnation of Evelyn we see her in, Yeoh always brings that original Evelyn’s aspirations, attitude, and fears with her. Also tremendous is Quan, the heart of the film, who gives an earnest, hilarious, and emotional performance, and Hsu, who has to be both extremely vulnerable and one of the biggest threats to the universe at the same time.

For all its fantasy trappings, this is a film with down-to-earth concerns: mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, coming of age and coming out, dreams and disappointments, otherness and belonging, generation gaps and information overloads.

There’s a real determination and intention to every chaotic choice, a method to this madness that ultimately makes Everything Everywhere All At Once one of the most ambitious and bold films in recent years.

A film for the history of movie making.