Everything Everywhere All At Once review: a multiversal masterpiece

It’s just about impossible to overemphasize the winking vulgarity of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s work together as the filmmaking collective Daniels. The film was their debut feature. Swiss Army ManPaul Dano was seen riding on the farting carcass of Daniel Radcliffe. Their best-known music video, for DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down For What,” has Kwan feeling the beat so hard that his crotch smashes through walls and ceilings, infecting the breasts and asses of everyone who sees him with similar destructive energy. Their short film Amazing Ball, a cosmic event results in Scheinert being bodily sucked up into Kwan’s rectum. Their imagery is often joyously crude, and almost always startling, as they go places most creators wouldn’t dare.

But at the same time, it’s just as difficult to overemphasize the humanistic messages their work embraces. These projects all have individuals finding life-affirming and strangely compelling power wherever they go. Swiss Army ManParticularly, it is quite startling for the deepness of its ideas on cynicism and existentialism as well as the meaning of human connectivity. Daniels’ latest project, the wild martial-arts multiverse fantasy You Have It All at Once, The trend continues with bloody murder-dildos and weaponized snot. There’s also a hilarious, fast-paced anal-insertion battle. But it’s also an achingly honest examination of despair, cynicism, anger, and ennui, all leading up to a message that’s all the more moving because before it asserts that life is worth living, it stares deep into the abyss, considering all the reasons why people might think otherwise.

Photo: A24

All You Need’s plot is best discovered in the moment, since it unfolds with a speed and verve that converts every new revelation into a fresh jolt of electricity. It’s enough to say that martial-arts superstar Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn Wang, an overstretched first-generation Chinese immigrant who owns a laundromat with her amiable husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), but barely has time for him or their frustrated adult daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) amid her day-to-day business struggles.

Deirdre is a humorless IRS agent, disguised Jamie Lee Curtis. Evelyn, on the other hand, is trying to impress Gong Gong (James Hong), by auditing her laundromat. Meanwhile, Joy is trying to get Evelyn to acknowledge Joy’s girlfriend Beth, and Waymond is trying to get Evelyn to acknowledge him at all. When Evelyn is informed that she’s the key to fighting a vast evil that threatens the entire multiverse, her knee-jerk response is a distracted, exasperated “Very busy today, no time to help you.”

When she is confronted with the threat, All You NeedAbsolutely explodes into a sequence of hilariously over-the-top, creatively staged battles. It also takes you through different realities and timelines. There are an astonishing number of personal explorations that take place at lightning speed. The worlds Evelyn accesses are silly, sad, or strange, but none of them challenge her as much as the things she’s missed out on understanding about herself, her family, and her own past and future.

Photo: A24

This is a movie that operates at the revved-up pace of stories like Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The WorldOder the animated Oscar nominee The Machines vs. MitchellsWhile the action scenes are endless, the actors drag the audience along with them. And yet Kwan and Scheinert keep finding small, quiet pockets where Evelyn can consider how she’s let herself and other people down, what she owes them, and what she can still offer them. For a movie that frequently throws Evelyn through realities and through walls and windows, it’s admirably focused on her well-being and her understanding of herself. And more than that, it’s focused on understanding how people inevitably limit their possible futures whenever they make choices, and how meaningless life can look after a series of choices goes wrong.

All You Need’s multiverse is a remarkably flexible metaphor. It’s equally suitable for expressing some common frustrations the audience may relate to, about botched choices and wasted opportunity. But it’s just as suited for setting up a series of ridiculously kickass action sequences where literally anything is possible, because the characters aren’t bound by reality or causality. Kwan, Scheinert, and others use the central idea of a multiverse to let characters alter their bodies, costumes, abilities, and settings in ways that can be visually spectacular and almost overwhelming. But they set it all up with a clarity of thought and intention that make it surprisingly easy — and thrilling — to follow.

Photo: A24

And even as they’re focusing on the big picture of a million universes collapsing around a single predatory evil, they’re just as aware of the smaller picture. So much of this story is told with tiny, telling details, like the way Joy nervously, wordlessly rolls her girlfriend’s sleeves down to cover her tattoos before trying to introduce her to Gong Gong. Waymond watches with awe as two elderly Chinese men at IRS exchange a casual kiss and longs for that same tenderness. The Daniels trust that viewers will follow the story, even when the grace notes blur by at warp pace, and without any explanations or underlining.

Everything, Everywhere at the Same Time Pop-culture is a universe full of familiar elements for fans. A little Douglas Adams absurdity there, or a visual concept or line from another movie. However, the Daniels quote 2001: A Space OdysseyIn one scene The Terminator in another, the movie’s biggest touchpoint is The MatrixEvelyn learns kung fu from Evelyn, which is a surprise to everyone.

A long list of Matrix sequels and re-quels, ripoffs and copycats, this is the first movie that authentically feels as surprising, daring, and outright game-changing as the Wachowskis’ 1999 original. Bullet time’s kaleidoscopic approach towards shifting forms and the special effects make them look just as revolutionary today as they did when they first appeared. The movie’s heady deconstructive philosophy of the universe feels as ambitious and radical as The Matrix’s Gnostic take on reality did back then. The martial-arts fight feels just as wild as any Jackie Chan or Wooping Yuen-choreographed match.

Where can I find them? The Matrix It’s completely caught up in its airless cool sense, with its humourless cybertech-Gothic aesthetic, love of kickass tablesaux and sexy style. All You Need There is a great sense of humor and playfulness that makes all existential philosophy flow more easily. This warp-speed storytelling has one effect: the film can sometimes jump from comedy to tragedy, and back again quickly enough that whiplash is possible. But in this anything-goes environment, the shifts don’t feel like tonal contradictions. The shifts are a way of acknowledging the absurdity and pain in life, as well as the fact that tension is what defines the human sensation.

Photo: A24

This cast is simply outstanding. Ke Huy Quan — once Short Round in 1984’s Indiana Jones and The Temple of DoomData In The Goonies — may be the biggest revelation in the cast, with a demanding role that has him switching affects and personalities repeatedly throughout the film, but maintaining that gentle longing throughout. But the Daniels demand a lot of all of their cast, and Yeoh, Hsu, Hong, and Curtis are up to the movie’s deeply weird challenges. (Jenny Slate Glee’s Harry Shum Jr. also show up in minor roles that no one’s likely to forget.) Like all Kwan and Scheinert’s projects, All You NeedThis movie is unique because of its bold ambitions as well as its outrageous grossness. You won’t find another filmmaker making movies such as this. Perhaps no one would ever want to make movies like this.

That can be a little sad to consider —even in a multiverse of endless possibility, we’re unlikely to see a movie like This again. However, this also signifies that you have to be present at all times All You NeedIt’s an exciting adventure. There’s no predicting where a Daniels project will travel in any given moment: up a character’s ass, or off into their wildest dreams. Sometimes it’s both at once. The miracle is that Scheinert and Kwan make it all feel natural, even when they’re going places no one else could imagine.

You Can Have Everything at OnceThe game is available in all major cities and will continue to roll out nationwide starting April 8.