Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is a Chinese-American woman struggling to balance a failing marriage, a strained relationship with her lesbian daughter, and caring for her elderly father (James Hong). After discovering a discrepancy in the financial records, Evelyn goes with her husband to the IRS, where she faces a tough conversation. But within seconds of riding in the elevator, Evelyn suddenly learns that her husband is not really her husband and that she herself exists in an infinite number of parallel universes. Now she must not only save her marriage and her sanity, but also save the fabric of existence itself, which has begun to burst at the seams.
“Everything Everywhere at Once” is the new project of the “Daniels” directorial duo, consisting of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. If their previous film, The Swiss Knife Man, was an absurdist tragicomedy, the new one is a rattling mix of science fiction, martial arts and family drama. It is only thanks to the well-tuned comedic intonation that such disparate components come together. At the same time, the plot here is so puzzling that it gives a hundred points ahead of, for example, “Dovod”. But for all its multilayeredness, the script of “All at Once and Everywhere” is devoid of heavy-handedness. On the contrary, numerous jumps from one reality to another, as well as regular twists, more often arouse curiosity than irritation: one wants to know what will happen next, rather than asking questions like “but if…”.
Separately, we should mention the perfectly staged action scenes. You get the feeling that the 1970s Hong Kong action flicks were inspired by the directors just as much as The Matrix, with slo-mo shootouts and fights involving every imaginable weapon imaginable, and characters performing amazing acrobatics.
As the action calms somewhat, the characters come to the fore and the film becomes a drama about the search for intergenerational solidarity. All the key people in the cast are responsible for this component: in addition to Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Xu (“Shan Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”) and the cult James Hong (“Big Mop in Little China”, “Blade Runner”) stand out.
True, somewhere in the middle of the film, the authors begin to change their sense of proportion. Where “The Swiss Knife Man” fits in the standard hour and a half, “All at Once and Everything” barely fits in two and a half. And if the action is memorable at least for its variety and the plot for its surrealism, the family showdown looks overly melodramatic against this background. In addition, closer to the finale, albeit amusing, but completely unnecessary scenes begin to appear, and there are quite a few of them. The final battle, however, smoothes out these shortcomings, but does not cancel out the fact that the film seems, if not long-winded, then certainly dragged out in places.
And yet, one should not ignore such an original and audacious film. It is a touching, funny, and entertaining story, created by intelligent people who are in love with cinema, and that is worth a lot.