Everything Everywhere All At Once movie review: You can’t have everything

Using the du jour device of multiverses, the writer-director pair of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (or the Daniels, as they prefer to be called) confusingly, and chaotically – but ultimately, neatly — tie together life and its many possibilities as viewed through the roads not taken, and the paths that were.

At the centre of it is Michelle Yeoh at the top of her form as Evelyn, a girl from China on whom rested many of her father’s hopes, who instead chose Waymond (Quan) and America, and to leave all that behind. Now the two run a laundromat, that takes up all her time and their energies, and most of their home, even as Evelyn deals with the fact that her daughter Joy (Hsu) has dropped out of college and declared herself gay, and there is an auditor determined to declare their business fraudulent on taxes.

And, that’s not enough. She is still trying to make up to her dad (Hong), who happens to have just arrived in America for his birthday. It also coincides with the Chinese New Year, leaving Evelyn no choice but to be on this day, “everything”.

It is in the midst of this – the papers spread over their dining table, making arrangements for the party where Evelyn hopes to peddle her cooking skills, as well as the setting up of the karaoke, where she can be the singer she once hoped to be – that she discovers the multiverses. The realisation comes through the one person whom she has come to regard the least in her life — and that may not be coincidental — her husband. That very day, incidentally, Waymond has been pondering how to deliver divorce papers to her as he is tired of hanging around hoping for her to notice him.

It all goes pretty chaotic from here on, as the shifting between the verses takes bizarre, nonsensical turns, some simply to get some wolf whistles. The premise is that the staid Evelyn, who has built her life religiously toeing the line, must do something weird to jump into another multiverse, so as to escape an evil being chasing her through the many universes.

Do the Daniels go over the top with this? The pair behind the other movie that had opinions similarly divided, Swiss Army Man, do. Does the film drag on, almost too pleased to punch over the parallels it is drawing? It does. Is the pitting of family members against each other taken too far? It is. Did Jamie Lee Curtis, the auditor from hell, deserve better? She does.

While the film makes it all worthwhile in the end, by having at the heart of it a much simpler tale of marital conflict, family discords and the bonds of love, the fact is that we see it coming much before the Daniels say ‘cut’.

If Everything Everywhere All At Once is about one thing, it is that you can’t have everything. The film should have heeded that advice.