The Oscars may have just happened, but one film has already started to garner some recognition that it could be a contender for best picture next year. It is an Asian American story that blends in elements of just about every genre, and it is does it all on a mind-bending colorful journey through the multiverse. The film is Everything Everywhere All at Once, and it was very impressive. Clearly a ton of work went into making this film, and it paid off. It had a very limited release, and it is slowly getting a larger release to theaters across the country. Although I hate it when they do a slow release, I do think it helps smaller more artistic movies like this gain more awareness, so more people hear about it and go to the theaters.
Everything Everywhere All at Once mainly focuses in on Evelyn, the matriarch of the Wang family. She is a no-nonsense kind of woman, but this has not helped her amount to any of the goals in her life. She is crushed by the life surrounding her. Her marriage is failing, she runs a subpar laundry mat, and her daughter is not living up to her expectations. When Evelyn, Waymond (her husband), and Gong Gong (her dad) are going to the office to get their taxes audited, Evelyn gets surprised by Waymond starting to act weird in the elevator and giving her strange directions. It quickly gets weirder as Evelyn and Waymond start to fight the IRS agent, and they start to channel powers from other multiversal versions of themselves to help succeed in the fight. Once they make it out of the IRS alive, and Evelyn successfully channels some powers, Waymond tells her the real problem. Evelyn is the chosen one, and she must find a way to stop Joy (her daughter) or as she is known in the multiverse, Jobu Tupaki. Jobu Tupaki has an omnipresence in all of the versions of herself, and this gives her almost infinite power. Evelyn does not want to kill her daughter, so she tries to find a way to save her family all while coming to terms with her life.
This movie revolves around the importance of family and finding meaning in some part of life, even when it can feel like there is no purpose. The Jobu Tupaki has gained the power of consciousness in all of the universes, and she has decided that since being able to see everything, that there really is no point to life, but Evelyn fights to keep her daughter alive and out of the bagel. Evelyn’s love for her daughter ends up saving her, but it also ends up saving the other multiverses as well. It is interesting to see her journey, because initially Evelyn is cold and distant from everyone due to her feeling like a failure, but by the end of the movie, she has found the love of her family, and that success is not everything. This also makes her relationship better with her husband, who had felt neglected and unheard, but now that she is listening and engaging, it has also revitalized her marriage.
The Jobu Tupaki with her massive amount of power created a bagel with literally everything on it, and I am not talking about the seasoning. As the self-appointed deity of the multiverses, she has the power to do as she pleases, which includes making a bagel that can destroy universes. The Bagel symbolizes many different evils in life. It represents despair and depression. The Jobu Tupaki felt alone once she got all her power. No one else knew what she was going through, so she felt it best to just go into the void and end it all. It also represents a lack of faith. She did not believe that things could be better. Her mindset did start to change when Evelyn also got unlimited access to the multiverse. She saw that she was no longer alone, and this started to drag her out of the despair, but she still needed to be shown love and care before she was fully willing to come out of it. Again, showing the power of family and love. It can be hard to be pulled away from the bagel sometime. It may feel like it is really calling your name, but you just need to pull yourself up and find the support system you need to get back to happiness and fulfillment.
This movie had many moving parts, and for the complexity of the movie to work, the effects needed to be done well, and they were. This has already won for best editing at South by Southwest, so that gives it some credibility. There are many times when the movie is flashing from place to place, and it needs to be done coherently, so the details that are being taken from one world to the next are being comprehended by the audience, so they know what to expect is transferring. There is also the scene where it is running down all the multiversal versions of Evelyn in headshot form, and it is so rapid, but it is cool to see so many of the transformation possibilities. Also towards the end, when there are the flash cut scenes of Evelyn helping the different people she is fighting, and she sees what their problem is, and then it goes back to the present, and she fixes the issue. It is both comedic and sweet at the same time, not something that would be easily conveyed if it was edited poorly.
Fantasy stories need to have rules, and they need to stick to the rules while telling the story. This movie does a good job of laying down the ground rules for their multiversal journey. Not only do they have quite a few rules, but they lay them down quickly and concisely, and it does not make the two hour and twenty-minute journey confusing. The rules make sense, and they stick to them, which is important. The rules also help to make the movie hilarious.
To be able to obtain a skill from another multiversal version of oneself, the person must do something ridiculous that would send them off of their own timeline. The two examples that come to mind immediately, and there are many good options to choose from, are when Evelyn is fighting the two guys, and to be able to gain a fighting ability, the two guys must shove trophies up their butts. The other example is when Waymond must give himself four papercuts in between his fingers, and he cannot do it, because one cannot intentionally give oneself a papercut. There are other comedic aspects to the movie as well. There are many different universes that Evelyn travels to, but there are two that stick out to me. One is the world where everyone has hotdogs for fingers, and Evelyn and the IRS lady are married, it is absolutely wild. It is so funny that it takes away from some of the serious moments at the end because they flip universes, and one cannot help themselves but laugh at the absurdity of having to play the piano with your feet because hot dog hands cannot play the piano. The other universe is the one where the chef has a racoon under his chef hat. It is clearly poking fun at Ratatouille, but it is even better seeing a racoon in live action control a chef, and then having Evelyn climb on top of the chef’s head to control him is also comedically great.
Many people have this as the best film of the year so far, and although I did thoroughly enjoy it, I still have Batman ahead of it. Both movies had me completely engaged for the whole time, which is saying something because they are both over two hours long. I honestly wished that when they movie ended that they would just restart it again, so I could go through the journey again and pick up on even more details. There is so much that went into this film, that it could be watched over and over, and there would still be details missed. This is a solid benchmark of a good movie, the more times you watch it, the more you can get out of it. The sad thing is, that in this day in age, everyone is inundated with new content constantly, that it is hard to take in content previously viewed without feeling like you are missing out on something new. Some of the people whose movie opinions I respect have this going down as one of the greatest movies ever, and I hate when I hear that before I see a movie, because then my expectations are way too high. So I do not think it quite reached the height of one of the best ever, but it was a really good film, and it deserves to be seen. I give it 4 stars and a high recommendation of going to see it in the theaters.
Other Movies This Week:
Uncharted: Uncharted and The Lost City are basically the same movie, but I think I like the Sandra Bullock Channing Tatum version slightly more.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010): This Freddy is actually creepy, the other one was more like the weird guy at the party you don't want to talk, because he tells the worst jokes.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Not a good movie for the Harry Potter universe.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: I cannot believe that J.K Rowling wrote this, no where near the level of Harry Potter.
Father Stu: Surprisingly comedic, but also dull, and I am unsure if that was pro or anti-Christian or really how I feel about the movie.
New Rankings:
Everything Everywhere All at Once: 4 Stars
Uncharted: 3 Stars
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010): 3 Stars
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: 2.5 Stars
Father Stu: 3 Stars
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