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Everything Everywhere All at Once

The nutters responsible for the oddly engaging Swiss Army Man have upped the ante with this multiversal ode to familial love. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, credited as Daniels, have Michelle Yeoh play Evelyn Wang, a frazzled owner of a coin laundry. We're introduced to her as she's preparing for two concurrent events - a Chinese New Year party and a trip to the tax office - both of which are causing a fair amount of strain. Her husband, Waymond, played by Short Round himself, Ke Huy Quan, is attempting to serve her with divorce papers; her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is not best pleased to be there, especially with her girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel) in tow; and her crotchety father, legendary James Hong, is all patriarchal glower. It's amazing to see this guy still turning it out - he's 93 and imdb has him down for 451 acting credits! Among those are roles in The Sand Pebbles, Chinatown, Blade Runner and Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds in Paradise. Like I said, legend.

Anyway, this opening is sharply played out and is a master class in character development. The rest of the film could perhaps have taken the lead from the intro, as there are sequences that lag a bit, especially in the mid-section. The story kicks into gear proper when Evelyn, Waymond and father Gong Gong meet an excellently dowdy Jamie Lee Curtis at the tax office. It's here where the 'verse-jumping' begins, as Alphaverse Waymond entreats Evelyn to join them in their battle with Jobu Tupaki, the malevolent being that wants to put everything on a black hole bagel (yep), probably destroying the multiverse along with it. Suck on those high stakes, Doctor Strange!

Evelyn quickly gets the hang of this verse-jumping, which is suddenly inhabiting the body of another version of oneself by way of some unusual trigger. She 'borrows' a martial artist, a singer, and a chef, among others. Look, there's some absolute batshittery going on here - sausage fingers that ejaculate tomato sauce and mustard, enemies anally inserting bulky phalluses as triggers to jump consciousnesses (that old chestnut!), snorting a fly, stapling heads, the bagel of truth, a Ratatouille raccoon, someone battering a dude with long rubber dildos, and yet the film somehow still manages to be poignant. The mother/daughter relationship is nicely written, Yeoh and Hsu bounce off each other with frustration and tenderness, and I really didn't expect to tear up during this film. It's not perfect but it has bucket loads of energy and heart, off the charts ideas, near epileptic visuals and the whole thing plays like a live action Rick and Morty episode. Can't argue with those levels.

You can still catch Everything Everywhere All at Once in cinemas now.

See also:

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), directed by Perischetti, Ramsey and Rothman is another great multiverse film, and J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot (2009) utilised a parallel universe pretty well.

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