Yesterday I was able to check out A24’s new movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once. I’ve heard nothing about amazing things about this movie, but the trailers promised a weird and interesting movie. So I was very curious about this movie, and how it is. Let’s find out!
The Good:
Well…yeah all of the buzz I heard about this being a weird and trippy movie is very much true. This is quite possibly the weirdest, wackiest, and strangest movie that I’ve ever seen. Where the basic concept is Michelle Yeoh’s character is chosen as the one to save the multiverse. So people from other multiverses come and help her stop this evil threat. But that doesn’t even begin to describe what actually happens in this movie. Because it just gets weird with these wacky images where it’s tough to even describe what you are seeing on the screen. You get this world where everybody’s fingers are hot dogs so Jamie Lee Curtis is playing the piano with her feet. You get a character fighting characters on a highway using a butt plug…that last part was not a joke. So if you are looking for something truly unique and different this is your movie.
Another thing here is that it is a multiverse story, where the multiverse plays a huge part in this movie. But it doesn’t rely on cameos that hype up the audience. So while it is a multiverse movie, it uses the multiverse gimmick in a very different way then from what you are used to. And it also uses the multiverse in a way to explore these characters, and explore the themes that are presented in this movie. The multiverse is more so used as a gimmick and a plot device, and it just works. It’s not one of those things where you can remove the multiverse from this movie, because the multiverse is so crucial and important to the plot of the movie.
And while it is so weird, wacky, and strange it does have this emotional journey for the lead character that helps ground all of the weird and fantastical stuff taking place in this movie. Where at its core it’s about Michelle Yeoh’s relationship with her spouse and her daughter, and she’s basically having a mid-life crisis and trying to juggle too many things at the same time. So it makes all of the characters in this movie feel like real characters, and not movie characters.
With this movie you have to talk about the cast, and all of the great and amazing actors they got for this movie. In the lead is Michelle Yeoh and she just nails this role, and everything that the movie requires of her. Where she can be fun and funny, she can do martial arts action, and she can be dramatic. She can truly do everything and can pull all of it off so well. It’s so much fun to see her doing all of the crazy, weird, and bonkers things. Also Jamie Lee Curtis as this complicated character, she is good, she is convincing at being this weird character. And it shouldn’t come to a surprise that Jamie Lee Curtis is great because she’s great in everything.
Finally, the movie does have some nicely shot action inside of it. Where I was a bit concerned with a $25 million budget, how much the action would look convincing and what not. But I think it all looked great, and you couldn’t tell that it was a smaller studio with a smaller budget making this movie. But there are some truly unique and so wild and different action sequences in this movie.
The Bad:
And the big thing here is as you move into the finale of the movie, they just keep stacking layers and layers on top of one another to the point where it just becomes a bit too much. Where they have this idea mixed with this idea that is a metaphor for this. And you get to a point in time where it just all becomes way too much, and I was so confused as to what was going on. And it happened for about 5-10 minutes around 70% of the way through the movie. And so I wish they trimmed back some of the ideas and metaphors present in this movie.
And maybe even cut 5-10 minutes from this movie, to make it a little bit faster. Because the movie is 2 hours and 19 minutes long, which isn’t a super long movie. But I don’t think this movie had 2 hours and 19 minutes worth of plot. And they easily could have trimmed 5-10 minutes from this movie like how I mentioned before.
Final Thoughts: Everything Everywhere All at Once is a truly unique, different, and weird experience. And this is a movie that is not going to be for everyone, a bunch of people are not going to like this movie. But for the right person this movie is a masterpiece, I wouldn’t go quite that high. But this is a very cool and very good movie.
The Score: 8.7/10 (B+)
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