Everything Everywhere All at Once is the type of film I wanted to love. It’s an original feature starring a predominantly Asian American cast, co-written and co-directed by an Asian American filmmaker, featuring an exciting science-fiction plot. Which is why it is with deep sadness and regret to inform you, reader, that I did not really enjoy this film.

The film stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, a stressed-out Chinese-American woman who operates a run-down laundromat with her incompetent husband Waymond (a welcome return from Ke Huy Quan, who starred in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies), while also taking care of her elderly father (the legendary James Hong). Evelyn and Waymond have an adult child, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), who has an estranged relationship with Evelyn. Adding to Evelyn’s stress is the laundromat being audited due to erroneous deductions. As the family is meeting with the IRS inspector (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn is suddenly swooped into an alternate dimension, where she learns of the existence of the multiverse—where infinite possibilities exist, including infinite variations of Evelyn, ones who’ve made better life decisions—and she is the key to saving the multiverse from the evil Jobu Tupaki. What follows is a high-octane, wild journey across the multiverse, filled with lots of action, jokes, and ridiculous visual gags.

The use of the multiverse in fictional stories is not new, but there’s been renewed interest in the concept as of late, mostly in the form of the biggest genre in cinema right now—superhero movies. Marvel and DC have already featured the multiverse in their recent cinematic (and television) projects, most recently Spider-Man: No Way Home. Both franchises have upcoming films that will heavily feature the multiverse, including Doctor Stranger in the Multiverse of Madness and The Flash. A Michelle Yeoh multiverse sounds like a dream come true, and the concept allows ample opportunity for storytellers to go for broke. But, unfortunately, what the directing/writing duo Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) prove is that an exciting idea isn’t enough to carry a film. You also need substance!

Firstly, it takes way too long for the plot to get going. The film is split into two parts, with part one dedicated to establishing Evelyn and her family’s background, as well as the rules of the multiverse. It should feel exciting once the multiverse aspect kicks in, but, instead, it’s extremely expository. So much so that I felt exhausted by the end of part one, and even the film’s hyperactive editing couldn’t help.

Part two is where things are more fun and psychedelic, with us visiting more worlds, including a universe in which everyone has hotdogs for fingers. If you’re familiar with The Daniels’ body of work (I enjoyed their debut feature, Swiss Army Man, in which Daniel Radcliffe literally plays a corpse for the entire film) then you’d also be familiar with the duo’s sense of humor, which can range from really clever to really juvenile. The film features hilarious jokes about something as unexpected as the Pixar film Ratatouille, to over-the-top gags like characters fighting for butt plugs, and characters fighting with dildos. Many jokes land, but many also don’t. And, at times, it felt like The Daniels were trying so hard to be irreverent that the humor became stale, safe, and expected (there’s a scene set in a universe where no life exists, which was meant to be funny, but my theatre was awkwardly silent).

By the time the film gets to its would-be-emotional climax, it doesn’t work because the film never properly sets up the stakes for it to be effective. Somewhere in the Everything Everywhere is a story about grappling with the decisions we made in life, or a story about the Chinese immigrant experience, or a story about mothers and daughters and what each owes one another, or something else. To be honest, I was confused about what the film was trying to say by the time Michelle Yeoh performed her emotional monologue in a climactic scene between Evelyn and Joy.

Despite these flaws, you can still clearly see the love that went into this film. The film could’ve easily felt cynical in its attempts to be shocking at every turn, but it felt earnest in its respects to the legacy of Asian cinema that came before it, including homages to great kung fu films (Quan has a great martial arts sequence in which a fanny pack plays a major role) and romance films from Wong Kar-wai. The film also felt like a love letter to Michelle Yeoh, who’s had a successful and eclectic career, but who’s also been underappreciated in Hollywood (this is her first lead role in a Hollywood picture, and I’m still mad she wasn’t nominated at the Oscars for her work in Crazy Rich Asians). We get to see her have a lot of fun as different versions of Evelyn, including a super meta version that basically depicts the real-life Michelle Yeoh. Where the film’s writing was weak, Yeoh carried it with her gravitas and star power.

I was so excited for this film ever since its trailer debuted at the end of 2020. Remember how cool that trailer was, especially when it did quick cuts between different variations of Michelle Yeoh’s character? I guess there is such a thing as having too much of a good thing, because the actual film leaned too much into that editing technique, eventually to the point where it felt gimmicky. Everything Everywhere All at Once tries to do and be too many things all at once, resulting in an uneven, exhausting, underwhelming, and overbearing assault on the senses that would have benefitted from someone behind the scenes reining The Daniels in on their ambitions in order to tell a coherent story.

2.5 out of 4 Kents.

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ is currently playing in select theatres and will open wide on April 8, 2022.

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