★★★★☆

The directors behind the farting corpse film are now back with a trippy, wonderful and utterly compelling story of a woman drawn into the multiverse.

If the aforementioned farting corpse film (otherwise known as Swiss Army Man) was to your liking, so will be the directing duo Daniels’ (Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert) second collaboration, Everything Everywhere All At Once. Yes, the title in itself is exhausting and the film runs a little on the long side at 2h 19 minutes, but have faith, it’s all worth it. 

Everything Everywhere follows Evelyn (a superb Michelle Yeoh), an aging Chinese immigrant with a hapless husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) and daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu, outstanding). The family owns a laundromat and are in trouble for their taxes. To top it all off, Evelyn’s senile father (James Hong) has just arrived for Chinese New Year. Evelyn doesn’t know this yet, but Waymond has grown increasingly unhappy and is about to ask for divorce. 

As the couple heads to sort out their taxes with accountant Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis, having the time of her life), Evelyn gets sucked into a fantastical adventure concerning the multiverse and discovers that she might be the only version of herself who can save the world. No pressure.

For a very long time, Everything Everywhere seems like it’s not really doing anything special with its premise. It’s weird and funky, but its themes feel overly familiar. There’s countless of other films that explore generational gaps within families as well as cultural differences. The familiarness is not necessarily a bad thing – the themes are well realised and have strong emotional resonance – but the narrative itself is so weird, you’d expect something else or maybe just something more. 

But here’s the thing: Everything Everywhere sneaks up on you and just as you think you’re in the clear, it pulls on your heartstrings. Hard. It’s more of a yank really. All of a sudden, everything that came before makes sense and the emotional thread becomes clear as day. 

Yeoh is, as expected, great. She always has been, she always will be, but this might be one of the most demanding roles she has done so far. You’re not always on Evelyn’s side; she’s selfish, impatient and irritatingly rude, but as she’s pulled into this new world of martial arts and multiversal jumping, Yeoh always makes Evelyn relatable as our eyes into all the craziness. 

Equally great is Ke Huy Quan, who returns to feature films after quite a long break. He and Yeoh create a believable, authentic dynamic of a couple who have been together for far too long and both, or at least Evelyn, wonders if she made the right decision leaving for America with Waymond. 

Does it all make sense? Not really, but it makes enough sense to keep us intrigued. At all times, Everything Everywhere is wildly entertaining. It’s fast and fun and full of surprises, ones that’ll leave your jaw on the floor. 

Fun is…well, fun, but it doesn’t matter unless there’s enough going on behind that fun exterior to keep us emotionally engaged as well. And it’s exactly that balance of spectacle and – as the kids call it – the feels, that makes Everything Everywhere such a masterpiece.

This film made me immediately want to call my mum and tell her I love her. It made me feel bad about not texting her as often as I should and it made me feel seen and understood as a woman, even though I am not a mother. We’ve all wanted to believe we’re the best possible version of ourselves in the multiverse, but we’ve also often faced the crushing reality that we might be the worst. But the Daniels’ prove that even then, you’re worthy. 

Text your mum, now.