Everything Everywhere All at Once is by the writer and director team of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinhert (Swiss Army Man, weird flick). I had the misfortune of hearing too many hyperbolic compliments beforehand, setting it up for the inability to live up to great expectations.
First, great premise: the world is f’ed up (of which we can all agree) and we need to all slow down and start appreciating the simple things in life.
Second, great casting. Jamie Lee Curtis towers in every scene and I’m so happy to see her in a comedic role again. She should never do another horror movie again. Michelle Yeoh plays the lead with a perfect oxymoron of tender toughness. Ke Huy Quan plays her husband and is also terrific as the good guy who you so want to finish first. Their daughter, Stephanie Hsu, is gorgeously complex.
But here’s the deal Dan and Daniel: your movie was 10% story, 10% ‘groovy’ computer graphics, 80% fighting. Which adds up to: Roxy not moved. I looked at my phone at one point and thought, I can’t watch another hour of karate chopping. Why didn’t you just slow down enough for us to appreciate some of the beautiful other universes? You made the same mistake as Wes Anderson’s film, The French Dispatch, where he delicately created these perfect, intricate scenes, but we only landed on them for a second, unable to appreciate any of it. It’d be like flying by the Grand Canyon on a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.
In the end, the point of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is to appreciate the people you are with, yet the film makers didn’t appreciate the finely crafted world they created enough to slow down and appreciate any of it. Makes we want to prove my point by shooting a video about the dangers on infidelity, by showing fantastic adulterous moments…Meanwhile, I’ll keep listening to all the shallow click bait folks brag about how fantastic the movie is, bagels giggle giggle, hitting people with dildos guffaw guffaw….oh the irony.
