Warning: Photosensitive viewers should watch Everything Everywhere All at Once with caution, as there are many scenes intense on the eyes.
Everything Everywhere All at Once, co-directed and co-written by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, falls into the small set of films that should be considered perfect media. Everything Everywhere All at Once, and everyone in it, especially Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan, should win every Oscar. It is that good.
The story follows Evelyn Wang (Yeoh), a laundromat owner who has just been served divorce papers from her ever-optimistic husband, Waymond Wang (Quan), is taking care of her ultra-judgemental father, Gong Gong (James Hong), while being ultra-judgmental of her daughter, Joy Wang (Hsu). While visiting the IRS, because the laundromat is also being audited, Waymond’s mind is taken over by a Waymond from another universe, who warns Evelyn of an interdimensional agent of chaos, Jobu Tupaki.
Though the plot is bizarre, from an emotional standpoint, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a completely grounded film. Centered on the relationship between Evelyn and Joy, the movie tugs at the heartstrings every chance it gets, with heavy themes of self-acceptance, family, the meaning of life, and is a great commentary on the cycle of abuse passed down from one generation to the next.
Arguably A24’s first superhero movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once casting Yeoh, a 59-year-old Asian woman, as the protagonist, shatters the MCU- and DCEU-mold built up since the superhero boom in the late 2000s. To date, the only Asian person to star in a project for either company is Simu Liu, the lead man in last year’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Despite efforts by the two company’s to make their cinematic universes more diverse, they continue casting a roster of younger and younger actors. In that sense, as in many, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a breath of fresh air.
The only criticism Everything Everywhere All at Once deserves is that there is no photosensitivity warning. Throughout the film, there are many intense scenes on the eyes, even more so than Incredibles 2, which made headlines in 2018 when theaters all across the world had to post warnings about the movie’s photosensitive content.