Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Being all she can be.
My brain hurts. Like, it’s not a bad kind of hurt - although I am fighting getting this done before the weather decides to knock out power or internet to sabotage me, so it could be a little bit sinuses. I think the real brain hurt is coming from processing everything I just watched, and trying all at once to gather those thoughts to write this out. There is a lot going on here. I mean, holy cow. I can’t even come up with something witty at this point, let’s just get to the tacks - tonight, it’s Everything Everywhere All at Once.
This is new, so I won’t get too much into the story, but let me see if i can give you the general premise of sorts without really ruining anything. A mom whose good at nothing somehow stumbles into a plot of multiple universes and branching paths where she seems to be the chosen one in defeating some kind of mega-powerful chaos. The thought here is that you can hop-verses with some fancy earpieces and a trigger event to link the branches, allowing you to be all that you can be - or they are? Look, it gets presented very hectically - and I’m really only playing at being confused, because the movie spills the beans on everything that’s going on. This isn’t Rubber where the fact a tire has telepathic powers and falls in love with a human girl is just a thing. No, here, the characters and events all play it out on screen - sometimes through show, sometimes through tell - but I would advise that perhaps you don’t leave the movie running while taking a bathroom break - I’ve seen people get confused by way more straightforward events than this.
The actors here are great. I mean, perhaps nobody is going to get an award for this - which is a little bit of a shame - but these people aren’t phoning it in at all. Our main has some massive acting chops - heck, no insult to her in the slightest but shes been doing this longer than I’ve been alive. She is joined by a bunch of folks - admittedly with my bad person recognition skills and memory issues I don’t recognize most of them in there, except for Lo Pan himself (I’m a big Little Trouble fan) - but that doesn’t stop them from doing a spectacular job. You want some laughs? You’ll get plenty of those in here, and a good few are with just how on-beat the actor performances are, down to stupid little things like a barely heard line and the likes.
The characters themselves have things to offer, but I’m largely going to ignore that here. See, with the whole multi-verse angle, you’ve got plenty of “what ifs” on display here to flesh out how a character could potentially be different from themselves, and given the lead’s pitched position of being the one to tap into everything to beat chaos, you can only imagine that there’s plenty of room for some character growth and development that doesn’t have to feel like a sudden heel-turn. It’s not all super-stellar characters, but they all serve their purpose and do it well thanks to the acting. The script also gives everyone in the main cast things to do throughout - so just because you think the IRS accounting lady might be a throw away character doesn’t mean she doesn’t keep finding her way into the story as it goes. It can make for some fun interactions when people are tapping into other-verse versions of themselves as well, as you aren’t always sure which one might be talking to you until you can get a couple of lines from them to see how they act and sound.
A mundane start
Of course, a lot of that part of this setup is trapped behind my mental adamancy on trying my hardest to not spoiler things for people - because let’s be real, more often than not a person isn’t here for my opinion expressly - they want to know if they would be interested in a movie based on (in this case) my opinion. So I’ll just kind of quick put some stuff out here - there is a lot for the thinking person. If you like looking into the morals and meat and bones of movies, the parts that become reflections on reality with philosophical pitchings on things like feelings, relations, humanity, and all that sort of jazz you will find a lot to be offered behind that chaotic layer of surface premise. If you are the kind of person who gets really invested in movies when you watch them, you mind even find the conclusive finale quite emotionally pitched as things escalate, as a right proper finale should do in anything with drama-like elements.
Now, there’s another two things that would probably bring a person to this movie - and I know me in particular for sure. Action, and effects. Now in regards to the action, this stuff is on point when it comes up. The entire movie isn’t one hundred percent action - it is telling a multilayered story with all manner of moving parts, and if it did the action non stop it’d be almost guaranteed that people would be left in the dust. When they crop up though, the action is both high-functioning well choreographed and shot scenes as well as often times very comical. You know that old-style martial arts flick most commonly remembered to be Jackie Chan’s style (even though it honestly was all the rage amongst the full set of big names)? Yeah, there’s a lot of that here. Of course, with the wacky antics of cross-reality jumps and the likes, it can get funny because of the weird just as much as how actors are delivering things. Still, action fans will be quite happy with whats on display here.
The other part of course was effects. Now, I don’t know if it’s true or not but I see on IMDB that a trivia fact is that there were only 9 people on the VFX team, with 5 doing most the work and learning how to do it from YouTube tutorials. Now, there was a time when I’d feel like that was a pretty darn bold claim - but in this day and age, with the likes of Corridor Digital pumping out stuff more convincing than some studios do and technology becoming ever powerful tools for those who understand how to use it, I find it hard to totally dismiss this fact as fooey. That said - bravo to them. The effects work in this is nuts, and they should be very proud of what they pulled off. Having seen the newer Strange movie, I can say that they easily pulled off similar effects (if nothing but in concept) that look just as good when it comes to the whole multiversal travelling sections. Now yes, sometimes things are distinguishable as not being real - it’s hard to find real life talking animals after all - but not once did I see an effect in this movie that either didn’t improve my enjoyment of the movie or impress me. Except hot-dog hands. Those are gross, and I’d really like to remove those parts from my memory.
You might think I cropped this wrong, but that’s what we call “zazz”
Should you watch this movie? Heck yes. Yes, it’s a tad long at slightly over two hours, and some folks will feel that more than others. Likewise, I got the plot understanding easy breezy, but others might find themselves a little flustered about the chaos going on around them even though it is explained perfectly fine - just perhaps a bit too quick or colorful for them. When it comes down to it though, this is another one of those movies that certainly benefits from the biggest, highest definition screen you can get it on. Buckle up and prepare for one heck of a trip.