YEOHVERYTHING YEOHRYWHERE

‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ (EEAAO) is a difficult movie to classify. It blends genres in an unusual way. It is an intense family drama, a love story, a comedy, a science-fiction movie, an action movie and epic adventure with the now done-to-death multiverse trope all rolled into one.

For want of a better way of describing it, it is like you made a smoothie with The Matrix, Inception, Tenet, Kungfu Hustle, In the Mood for Love, Chung King Express (names I’m pulling out of my hat at first thought) into a blender, and blitzed it for 30 seconds.

Only 30 seconds, mind you, because you still feel the bits and pieces of the individual ingredients, not a homogeneous gook. It does feel like a whole new thing though, a completely new flavour. You may like it because you like all the individual things that went into it. Does that make sense?

EEAAO (Old McDonald, please excuse) references several things (pay attention!), and movies seamlessly into the narrative. Everything, everywhere, all at once, just as the title says. It is experimental, pays homage to several earlier movies, and reminds you, overall, of the style of work that came out of the Hong Kong New Wave.

Apart from style and narrative innovation, the story of EEAAO doesn’t break new ground. An immigrant Chinese family is dealing with the possibility of their laundromat business being confiscated after a tax audit. Evelyn, the matriarch and her family (husband, daughter, father) are dealing with interpersonal issues parallelly, to make matters complicated.

The movie then suddenly veers us into a totally different realm where her husband turns out to be time-traveller from a different alternate but simultaneous universe (Schrodinger’s cat, anyone?) who is in search of a version of Evelyn, across a multitude of universes… well, the multiverse. All to stop someone evil who intends to harm the whole universe, I mean, multiverse.

The story takes rapid twists and turns across various universes where the characters are different possibilities of themselves with completely different abilities in completely different circumstances. We are treated to a mostly enjoyable theatre of the absurd (no more spoilers, sorry!), all coming to a close at the very predictable end to the epic three-chapter adventure saga. I say mostly because there are times in the second chapter when you feel the plot is stretching a bit thin, and you know what’s going to happen next.

As a longtime fan of Michelle Yeoh (especially of her Hong Kong action movies!), it was a delight to see her carry the movie on her strong shoulders doing everything she has always been good at — action and drama. And with Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and James Hong bringing up the rear — and a thoroughly enjoyable performance from Jamie Lee Curtis — EEAAO is a roller coaster ride to remember!

Watch it? Of course, it won seven Oscars! Out of eleven nominations!

More information here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6710474/