Chinese American Evelyn Wang is married to Waymond, and they both run a laundromat. Her daughter Joy is a lesbian, but Evelyn hides that from her grandfather. While going to an IRS office, Waymond's mind is replaced with the mind of Waymond from another universe, who informs Evelyn that she must fight and defeat Jobu Tupaki, a villian with superpowers who wants to destroy all the universes through a black hole shaped like a bagel. It turns out that a version of Evelyn from another universe was a scientist who discovered how to jump through one universe to another, but her daughter Joy obtained all the powers and used them against her. Joy admits she wants to die because she thinks life is pointless in the universe, but Evelyn manages to talk her out of this plan and embrace her as her daughter. Evelyn and Joy make up, and the world is returned back to normal.
One of the most unusual and notable movies of 2022, "Everything Everywhere All at Once" by the Daniels is another movie about the multiverse, but still done with enough uniqueness to feel fresh and original. This is something like Wong's "The One", "Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse" and "Avengers: Endgame", just done with an overload of bizarreness and a more philosophical touch, and thus the viewers will have to see the film several times to get all the overcomplicated subplots and narrative levels. The idea that the heroine Evelyn (excellent Michelle Yeoh) can tap into all the hundreds of different universes and obtain a talent from an alternate self is brilliant, and comes in handy—in one example, she taps in to an alternate self who is a Kung Fu fighter, "downloads" that ability and uses it to fight the bad guys. In another, she taps in to an alternate self, a master of spinning signs on the street, to take a shield from a SWAT team member and use it to battle all the people in the room. Through it, the story contemplates how many hiden, unused potentials lie in a person, and what skills someone could perfect under different circumstances in these worlds, revealing that people are more than the sum of their parts. However, not all jokes work. At least two are stupid: the universe with people having hot dogs instead of fingers is lame; the two henchmen who have to do a "butt plug-in" to gain access into their alternate universe self, so they they jump onto a trophy to insert them into their butts, seems more like something from an "American Pie"-style vulgar comedy series. However, even the former is somewhat alleviated when Evelyn gives a speech which implies the hot dog fingers are an allegory on disability. The joke involving a spoof of "Ratatouille", but featuring a raccoon instead of a rat on a cook's head, pulling his hair to control him, also doesn't have a good of a punch line (Evelyn jumps on the cook's shoulders and pulls his hair to make him run).
Also, the touching moment in which an alternate universe Waymond, who was never married to Evelyn, gives her a confession ("I wanted to say, in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.") would have been more powerful hadn't the similar multiverse episode #1.8 of "Rick and Morty" beaten it to the punch. The martial arts action sequences are surprisingly well choreographed, the Daniels use several cinematic techniques (a split screen with two Evelyns in two universes; different color palettes or aspect ratios for different universes; match cuts to transition from a character doing one move in one universe to another universe...) and creative metafilm ideas well (in the middle of the film, the closing credits suddenly appear, saying "The End", "A Daniels Film", etc., only to be revealed to be a screening of a movie Evelyn is watching in the cinemas, in an universe where she is a movie actress; Evelyn and Joy as rocks in an alternate universe, contemplating some deep thoughts shown only through subtitles). Even though it is also assembled as an action film in which a heroine fights a villain with superpowers, the movie is first and foremost a symbolic drama about a mother-daughter relationship, which gives it an emotional anchor and advantage. Evelyn's daughter, Joy, the villain, wants to symbolically destroy every universe because she is a nihilist ("If nothing matters, then all the pain and guilt you feel for making nothing of your life goes away") and feels intergenerational cultural conflict, which becomes remarkably emotional near the end, a meditation on each new young generation falling into depression or despair, and contemplating suicide because they think nothing matters, until the more experienced Evelyn realizes she carried her frustrations on to Joy, inherited from her own father, and as Evelyn finally heals herself ("It's okay if you can't be proud of me. Because I finally am.") she is able to break the cycle and heal Joy, too, nicely showing her that kindness is the way out of misery—even depression is just a phase that will go away with time. As absurd as the movie may seem, it is equally as sincere: an abstract depiction of a broken mother-daughter relationship that is repaired in the end. The movie does turn into "Too much, too many all at once" at some parts, but it has a purposeful complexity—in just 140 minutes, it creates a multiverse world equally as rich and dense as James Joyce's "Ulysses".
Grade:+++
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