Review: ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Delightful

If the “many worlds interpretation of reality” is true, and not “a fantastic piece of make-believe championed by some of the smartest physicists of our time,” as James Gleick, author of Time Travel: A History, put it, then there would be lots of universes in which I don’t exist. And there would be lots of universes in which Everything Everywhere All at Once, the latest film by directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (who as a duo go simply by “Daniels”), does not exist, either. I cannot speak much to the former set of realities. As to the latter, however, I have to say I feel sorry for their inhabitants. For I would not want to live in a world without this delightful, hilarious, thrilling, heady, and utterly bonkers film.

To attempt to summarize a movie that, in the course of its roughly two and a half hours, traverses multiple realities (occasionally simultaneously) is difficult, but one must at least try. The central character is Evelyn Wong (Michelle Yeoh), a put-upon matriarch who, as the story begins, is dealing with a series of personal crises: a struggling business (under investigation by an IRS agent portrayed alternatingly with bureaucratic sloth, fierce menace, and unexpected pathos by Jamie Lee Curtis), a troubled marriage (to husband Raymond, played by Ke Huy Quan); a visiting, disapproving father (the legendary James Hong); and a strained relationship with her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu).

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Jack Butler

Jack Butler is a former submissions editor at National Review.

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If the “many worlds interpretation of reality” is true, and not “a fantastic piece of make-believe championed by some of the smartest physicists of our time,” as James Gleick, author of Time Travel: A History, put it, then there would be lots of universes in which I don’t exist. And there would be lots of universes in which Everything Everywhere All at Once, the latest film by directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (who as a duo go simply by “Daniels”), does not exist, either. I cannot speak much to the former set of realities. As to the latter, however, I have to say I feel sorry for their inhabitants. For I would not want to live in a world without this delightful, hilarious, thrilling, heady, and utterly bonkers film.

To attempt to summarize a movie that, in the course of its roughly two and a half hours, traverses multiple realities (occasionally simultaneously) is difficult, but one must at least try. The central character is Evelyn Wong (Michelle Yeoh), a put-upon matriarch who, as the story begins, is dealing with a series of personal crises: a struggling business (under investigation by an IRS agent portrayed alternatingly with bureaucratic sloth, fierce menace, and unexpected pathos by Jamie Lee Curtis), a troubled marriage (to husband Raymond, played by Ke Huy Quan); a visiting, disapproving father (the legendary James Hong); and a strained relationship with her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu).