Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Everything Everywhere All at Once was the first film I saw at the cinema this year and I went to see it on my birthday so it was a treat to myself. To try and describe what the plot is quite difficult. To borrow a phrase from Doctor Who, its all a bit timey wimey. Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn who is swept into a plan to try and save the universe. That's about as much of the plot as I can follow because this isn't for the sort of people that like to be spoon fed the plot to them. This requires you to pay attention to the film.

It’s great to see Ke Huy Quan play Waymond Wang. It's just great to see Short Round in anything and he gets to play two versions of Waymond. One is the husband who isn't thought of very highly and is a bit walked on by Evelyn and the other is a Jackie Chan inspired hero. The fight scenes he is involved in are great fun to watch. To be fair the fight scenes that both of them are in are pretty good and it's not surprising that Yeoh is as good as she is. The only thing that was missing from the film was Jackie Chan and then you’ve got the holy trinity and this film would have been epic.

The film has some great supporting cast members. In particular James Hong who plays Evelyn's father Gong and like Quan, he plays the part like an old man and then changes into someone more aware of what is going on. Jamie Lee Curtis who played Deirdre who at one point has sausage fingers in one of many barmy moments in this film. Curtis has come a long way from Halloween and this isn't the sort of role that you would expect someone like her to take but it shows that she was willing to take a risk. 

The editing is superb as it manages to deal with multiverses and all the toing and froing and yet kept me interested in what was happening even though it was difficult to keep track. In fact it is pretty much pointless trying to keep up with what is going on because so much madness happens that it doesnt follow a traditional structure. To be able to somehow make the film work is a credit to the editor for keeping the strangeness in but not alienating a good chunk of the audience.

There are some crazy moments throughout the film including when some of the characters are trying to shove a certain item up their backside and then take part in a fight scene like that. There is no way that this would have been allowed in a Disney or Universal film. Only A24 would allow this to make it into the final story. The second half of the film is very hard to follow but the joy of the film is that it's still entertaining to watch. Things happen and nothing really happens except that by the end, Evelyn has grown as a person. 

Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the weirdest films that I have seen for quite some time. But I was completely engaged by what I was watching. The performances were all really good with Yeoh and Quan being the best but there wasn't a weak link in the film. The only thing that stops this film from being a five star film is that due to me not following what was going on all the time and what it meant means that it just misses out but I think that the fault is with me and not the film. When all we are getting are superhero films it's nice to have a film that tries something different and due to the directors this is a gamble that pays off.