At a young age, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) married Wymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan) against the will of her parents and left her father’s house. Wymond bought a laundry, which Evelyn had to immerse herself in. The business did not go very well, Evelyn had to deal with a lot of problems, and she herself did not notice how thirty years had passed, after which the family was in a complete dead end: Wymond was going to divorce her, with her daughter Joy (Stephanie Xu) there is no rapport, and then the laundromat is on the verge of bankruptcy, and if Evelyn doesn’t settle the tax claims that the soulless IRS employee Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis) puts up for her, then they could lose everything they have. But she still has to take care of her elderly father Kon Kon (James Hong), with whom she has had a very difficult relationship since her marriage.
Evelyn decides to go to the tax scum Deirdre along with all her sack – with her grandfather Kon Kon and her husband: they say, let that damn Beaubeirdre see their friendly Chinese family and finally stop asking why such substantial sums are written off for karaoke in the cost of running a laundry.
However, when they were going up the elevator in the tax building, Evelyn Wymond’s husband suddenly seemed to switch over, spoke to her in a slightly altered voice, put some devices with buttons on her ears, handed over some papers and asked during a meeting with the tax the auditor to follow the instructions set out there.
Evelyn followed the instructions and as a result, right during the meeting, she ended up in the back room, where the same other Wymond explained that they themselves exist in many different parallel universes. In the world where another Wymond exists, a universal evil named Jobu Tupaci has arisen. This evil destroys the world of another Wymond, and it destroys many other parallel worlds.
Another Wymond searched for a long time for a person who could stop this evil, and in the end it turned out that it was she, Evelyn from this world. Of course, in her current state as a run-down owner of a wretched laundry, Evelyn cannot even cope with some Mrs. Deirdre, but with the help of devices that another Wymond supplied her, Evelyn can move into Evelyn’s bodies from parallel worlds and perceive their knowledge and skills. And among those others, Evelyn is a lot of specialists in all sorts of serious martial arts. But certainly not from a world where Evelyn has sausage fingers instead. And not from a world where Evelyn is just a boulder.
***
An extremely unusual and original film directed by experimenters Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, creators of the sensational Swiss Army Knife arthouse with Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe. The film was staged at the independent studio “A24”, where such films as “Solstice”, “Lighthouse”, “Legend of the Green Knight”, “Macbeth” and others were filmed, however, the Russo brothers, who staged four “Avengers” of the cinema universe, are in the producers here Marvel.
The name of the picture was not given in vain: here it is really “everything is everywhere and at once.” The creators of the film, who are also screenwriters, included a whole bunch of diverse cultural, fantastic and cinematic layers here, as a result of which “Everything is everywhere and at once” is a noble mishmash of easily readable references to various science fiction films, but it still does not look like just an imitation.
The film simultaneously reminds of many things, but at the same time it is completely independent. It begins as a tragicomedy about the difficult working days of a Chinese family in America. An ingenuous dad who doesn’t have enough stars from the sky, a mother tortured by all this everyday life, a lesbian daughter with a syndrome of misunderstanding with her mother, a stern grandfather who cannot be explained by modern realities, and over all this, like a sword of Damocles, is the harsh tax auditor Deirdre Bobairdre, whom everyone these Chinese figli-miglis are completely up to the lantern! For there can be no cultural tolerance when the foundations of the United States are trampled – paying taxes!
From a certain point, there seems to be a funny fantastic fun about multiple worlds and the fact that Evelyn must, flowing into her various incarnations, gain the right kung fu (relatively speaking) in order to be able to resist not only Job Tupac, who threatens to destroy everything these worlds, but also to parallel tax auditors Deirdrum Bobairdrum, and this, I assure you, is much more difficult.
However, this transition to fantastic fun happened somehow – not to say that very cheerfully. And for another half an hour it all developed very slowly, which, I confess, was somewhat annoying. And only then, an hour after the beginning of the film, the action accelerated sharply, after which the picture went into a fever (in a good way) in various directions – from The Matrix to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where, let me remind you, the beautiful actress Michelle Yeoh played a major role, as in this film. At the same time, her heroine, with her firmness and inflexibility, resembled her own Eleanor Young from Crazy Rich Asians.
Also, while watching this film, the low-budget but really funny British film “Time Travel FAQ” came to my mind, and certain allusions with the wonderful “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” also took place here, of course. Because the world of thinking stones-boulders, as well as a portal to other worlds in the form of a huge black donut – this is quite worthy of Douglas Adams!
For the mocking reference to the wonderful, albeit somewhat infantile “Ratatouille” – a special thank you to everyone, and the cat Bublik was especially happy about this, because the raccoon is still much closer to cats than to rats in terms of psychotype.
Some viewers were somewhat repulsed by the fact that Job Tupac at some point was mudokhal (approx. Bagel: remind Exler to replace this term when publishing with “beaten”) the policemen with a huge rubber cock (approx. Bagel: remind Exler replace this term when publishing with “dildo”), but I think that this is just quite in the paradigm of the metaphorical and, I would even say, the existential-philosophical approach of the creators of the picture to what is happening, because – well, tell me honestly: what else to fuck these scoundrels, if you think about it?
So, an hour after the start, the film sped up noticeably and there was already such a specific fantastic black-humor shizuha, moreover, equipped with all sorts of correct and spectacular kung fu and so on, and the directors decided not to deny themselves anything and even covered up a false ending, which for some viewers was easily calculated, while others made them get up and leave the cinema building, but with this the creators of the picture showed that nothing was too much for them.
Well, I must say that in the picture, of course, there is a clear moral. Which is this: no one cares about these multiple parallel worlds and this (this) Job Tupac, threatening (th) all these worlds. If you do business in the United States, then you must pay taxes as required by the United States and their complete (I wrote “finished”? of course it’s “legal”) representative: Mrs. don’t really care who it is.
And family matters need to be dealt with on time, yes. But this applies to all families: from Chinese to American-Jewish and multiple parallel ones, even if you are a stone of advanced years!
Let’s answer the question, what prevents this film from being a masterpiece? Because, of course, there is something masterpiece in it: in general, I am very surprised at how such directors were allowed not to restrain their wildest instincts and even allocated a lot of money for this. But a clear protractedness prevents him from becoming a masterpiece. Alas, yes! The first hour should have been exactly half an hour. The last hour also obviously needed to be put into half an hour. But they wanted to chew everything and put it in the mouth of the audience, which is clearly too much for a picture that the corresponding viewers will perfectly perceive without any chewing, and this will in no way help the audience, who will stop watching after a maximum of an hour, because it is absolutely impossible to watch such a madhouse. And there, by the way, I note that about half of the dialogues are in Chinese with English subtitles.
Great movie, I really enjoyed it. Against the background of any mainstream sequel-triquel-quadruple bullshit, it’s just a breath of fresh air. Not without flaws, yes: indeed – they dragged it out a lot. But cool, just great!
What rating did I give? 7.5? For tightness? Yes, I put 8.0. Because infinity is not the limit.
But you have to be ready to watch this movie. You shouldn’t watch it before reading this review. So share this review with everyone: you don’t want them to make a terrible mistake, right?
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Director: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ke Huy Kuan, Stephanie Xu, James Hong, Tally Medel, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., Biff Whiff, Sunita Mani
Worldwide gross: $64 million
Fantastic black humor tragicomedy, USA, 2021, 139 min.