Everything, Everywhere, All At Once ★★★
RARELY has a film been so hyped as Everything, Everywhere All at Once.
At a time when cinema relies too much on remakes, reboots, franchises and comic book heroes, this American sci-fi action comedy stands out like a beacon.
But there are a couple of problems, the main one being it doesn’t hang together for the full, two-hour plus running time.
For the first hour the energy is infectious and the ideas come thick and fast. Michelle Yeoh is in great form as a laundry operator who has to traverse her multiple personalities inhabiting the multiverse in order to gather the skills to save humanity.
If this had been over in 90 minutes I may have loved it; but it’s not and sadly I don’t.
Yeo plays Evelyn Wang, the matriarch of a family struggling to get by on the earnings from a laundromat business.
Evelyn’s husband is growing tired of their marriage, her father is struggling with his mental and physical health and her daughter with her sexual identity.
On top of this they have the tax office on their case because they dared to claim a return against the business for the purchase of a karaoke machine.
Their appointment with IRS investigator Deirdre Beaubierdre, played by an almost unrecognisable Jamie-Lee Curtis, becomes the platform for lift-off into the fantastic and bizarre.
Martial arts fights with dildos, hot dogs for fingers, living raccoon hats, talking rocks and don’t-looking black holes are all part of the mixed up vision from the directing pair Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert who previously gave audiences another bizarre turn in Swiss Army Man featuring Daniel Radcliffe as a farting corpse that keeps coming back to life. Yep, it’s all fun, but only for a certain length of time.
The Daniels, as they are collectively known, do say some heartfelt things about trying to be the best version of yourself, but the sentiments are largely swamped.
Slowly the constant procession of visuals and concepts becomes less entertaining and scattergun in approach.
Ducking in and out of universes becomes less thought-provoking or entertaining, especially when the time spent, outcomes achieved and personalities encountered vary less and less.
There are still some laughs and thrilled along the way, but the stakes become less serious and a little too like the types of films it is trying to distance itself from.