Review of Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) by Adamendetail — 01 Jun 2022

Very ambitious multiversal drama. I honestly was not expecting this movie to be built around a family delivered through a multiverse of astounding scenes and imagery but I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued by it. Particularly impressed by the brilliant Michelle Yeoh and the underhyped performance of Ke Huy Quan.

However, considering the high standards the movie sets for itself - despite the brilliance of its characters, how the story is told, and how the movie's plot unfolds, and - if Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is perceived as the fast-paced drama it is albeit set across a multiverse: The movie underdelivers. To be clear, yes, the movie borrows a lot from multiple genres but at its core it is mostly a drama.

In that light, it struggles to provide sufficient emotional fulfillment by the end of the movie and all the brilliance of the movie's methodology amounts to little. It also fails to deliver anything new or unique to match its multiversal ambitions, undermining its brilliance with a bagel. Point being: The movie shows that it can tell its story across a multiverse but ultimately does not prove that it has a reason to do so.

Also, while Stephanie Hsu was good for the most part, I think she perhaps lacked a functional range to portray the varieties of her character. Thus contributing to the emotional gap at the end of the movie.

Overall, it's a mostly superb movie, seriously original and put together with Oscar worthy editing. If there was one Oscar this movie would easily win, it would have to be for the editing work.