Everything Everywhere All at Once: Silly, Strange, Serious & Stunning

Ummmmm – I just want to know what the writer’s room looked like for Everything Everywhere All at Once because what the heck??

I imagine a focus group of potheads and toddlers pitching their ideas on alternate versions of humans. 

How about hot dogs for fingers?

What about a super strong pinky finger?

What if they’re rocks and they can only speak through captions?

Like – really, this movie is the definition of boundless creativity. 

It’s “there are no stupid questions (or answers)” visualized.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is an action, comedy, drama, sci-fi, everything bagel of a movie about family, multi-dimensional travel, taxes, and uh - I think that’s the best I can do in terms of explaining this movie…In short - it’s a rollercoaster of a watch. 

This movie is so unbounded, so unrestrained, genre-bending, theme-bending, unlike anything you’ve ever seen before in a multitude of ways. Not within your average train of thought. 

Wild, untamed. 

Silly yet serious, strange and stunning.

If you’ve not yet watched the movie, I’d recommend you watch it first, before reading this review <3

Everything Everywhere All at Once presents –

Silly, Strange, Serious & Stunning

Act 1: Silly

Fanny Pack Fight: The fanny pack fight was the first moment where I was like, this is not your average movie. Take the least intimidating item that you can find on a person and make it a threat. It’s so contradictory to see a fanny pack as a weapon. That juxtaposition was hilarious. 

Power Pinky: Take the least intimidating finger and make it the biggest threat… I’m sensing a pattern here.

Racoon-touille: Ratatouille but instead of a rat it’s a raccoon. What’s easier to hide in your hat than a raccoon?

The Evolution of Hot Dog Fingers: Made me grateful that I endured 2001’s A Space Odyssey just so that I could understand that reference.

Super Sign Flipper: Being a sign flipper is low-key training you for high-level defensive skills.

The rocks speaking through captions were one of my favorite things.

Two Words — Googly Eyes.

I didn’t realize that Michelle Yeoh, the actress who plays Evelyn, was in Crazy Rich Asians until one of the alternate versions of Evelyn was a red-carpet actress for the film Crazy Rich Asians.

I’m not sure what’s real and what’s fake anymore.

These are just to name a few. I don’t know if it’s possible to fully expand on the silliness that is this film.

Act 2: Strange

The bagel of nothingness made sense but at the same time, it didn’t …

Jobu Tuapki AKA, Joy, the unlikely villain to Evelyn’s unlikely hero, was a peculiar villain.

Similar to The Joker, her unpredictability made her absolutely terrifying.

The scene where she displays her endless power to her mother, Evelyn, was mind-bending and the pinnacle of strange.

So many emotions and feelings overlap that you’re just like, what??

A moment that made me go, what the frick?! (but with a stronger hitting f-word) — In order for the multi-verse jumpers to connect with another version of themselves, they had to perform a weird task. So at one point they became disconnected from an alternate universe’s superpower mid-fight and needed to connect with a new universe. In order to switch to a new universe, they had to put metal up their booty-hole. 

Like – pause –

You read me right. metal. up. their. booty-hole.

Like… What the F?! What is this raunchiness?! What the heck is this movie and why?!?!?!?!

And it doesn’t even end there – Once they got it up their booty-hole, they had to leave it in while fighting.

So yeah… that happened… they let that make it to the final cut.

As I said before, this film believes in no stupid ideas. Nothing is off limits meaning lots of strange moments.

Act 3: Serious

There was one portion of the movie where I almost started sobbing —

When the mother is saving her daughter from the nothing bagel (the antithesis of the everything bagel), she holds her daughter from behind by the waist, pulling her into the light as the nothing bagel pulls in the other direction into the darkness. Just as the strength of the darkness begins to overwhelm the mother, the grandpa (Evelyn’s father) holds on to Evelyn to help pull both his daughter and his granddaughter away from the darkness. Not long after, Evelyn’s husband assists the dad in pulling his daughters out of the darkness.

The imagery of the whole family working together to bring the daughter out of the darkness, that vivid picture right there, was a beautiful representation of overcoming depression. You can’t do it alone, you need a strong community, an army, to pull you out of the darkness. 

Another aspect of the movie really had my mind thinking very existentially:

The alternate, parallel universes seemed to represent what was happening on a spiritual level. It showed how what’s happening on an invisible level plays a role in the visible world.

The visible world, the reality, and the universe that the audience lives in is the one where Evelyn is an exhausted laundromat owner and Joy is her lesbian daughter fighting for her family’s acceptance.

But in the invisible world, Evelyn is a fighter, a superhero, and Joy is everything yet feels nothing.

It makes you think about what’s happening on an invisible level that plays a role in the visible universe that we’re perceiving right now.

Act 4: Stunning

There are so many stunning, and impressive moments that I can’t wrap my mind around how they made that visual magic happen.

It blew. my. mind.

I kept thinking, “This is genius.”

So creative, so artistic, so many cool edits and special effects in this movie, my senses were delightfully overloaded.

The main actresses were phenomenal. Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn and Stephanie Hsu as Joy were chef’s kiss magnificent. You couldn’t help but fall in love with their characters.

Post-Credit Scene: In Conclusion…

I can acknowledge the amazingness, stunningness, mind-blowing creativity, and unboundedness of Everything Everywhere All At Once but for some reason, I still felt a bit disengaged from the narrative. My only critique is that it didn’t suck me into its world which is a totally subjective observation.

I was really engaged in the beginning, intrigued. But once I got a feel of the movie, it wasn’t able to keep me at the height of curiosity that it produced in the very beginning. Ashamedly, I was checking my phone occasionally to see how much time was left.

I think that when there’s so much going on, it’s easier to become distracted and therefore disengaged from the narrative. That’s why I think I didn’t get into this movie as much as I would’ve liked.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is an eccentric visual experience that somehow packed everything into a 2-hour 20-minute runtime and takes you everywhere in the universe, all at once.

Rating: 7.9/10

What are you thoughts on Everything, Everywhere, All At Once? Let me know in the comments below!

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Peace, love, and lots of popcorn,

IMO