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Everything Everywhere All at Once
For my money, the most over-hyped film of 2022, Everything, Everywhere All at Once is an elaborate and technically dazzling fantasy/black comedy that is rich with imagination, but said imagination controls the narrative turning the story pretentious, overly complex, and of course, overlong.
Evelyn is a hard-working but miserable owner of a laundromat who is in the midst of divorcing her loving husband, Waymond and is having trouble accepting the fact that her daughter, Joy, is a lesbian. Evelyn is also frustrated being the primary caregiver for her elderly father and is being audited by the IRS and is in serious danger of losing her business. As she, Waymond, and Grandpa sit down at the IRS with a hard-nosed auditor named Deirdre Beaubeirdre, Evelyn is confronted by a version of her husband from a different universe who offers to take Evelyn on a journey of the roads that she never chose that might have led to a different life for her.
Co-directors and co-screenwriters Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Swiss Army Man) have concocted what begins as a very simple character study of a troubled woman that balloons into a gargantuan and nonsensical fantasy that borrows elements from several other films, but covers them up with so much cinema pyrotechnics that sometimes they are hard to detect. The story that is initially offered, a look at what other ways Evelyn's life could have gone, eventually gets buried in a lot of artsy symbolism and blazing special effects that eventually come off as reasons why Evelyn's life is the way it is now, rather than what her life could have been.
Kwan and Scheinert deliver a textbook on just about every movie making technique the viewer can imagine, including borrowing plot elements from other movies. While watching, at least half a dozen movies flashed through my mind, including Back to the Future, The Terminator, Ratatouille, and A Christmas Carol, but each visit to an alternate life goes on way too long. Characters introduced in early parts of the film are reintroduced throughout the rest of the film for no discernable. The most aggravating part of the story is there is a point during the final third of the film where Evelyn appears to accept who her daughter is and, for some reason, it just makes a daughter even more angry, initiating a deadly battle with her that is one of the main reasons that the film is about 45 minutes longer than it needs to be.
The film has been generating serious Oscar buzz already and I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the spectacular production values, with special nods to editing and visual effects, which are both Oscar worthy. Michelle Yeoh deserves her first Oscar nomination as well for her rich and charismatic performance in the starring role, that keeps the viewer invested in spite of all the razzle dazzle surrounding her. Ke Huy Quan, who is best known for playing Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, is a bit annoying as Waymond but I loved Stephanie Hsu as Evelyn's daughter and Jamie Lee Curtis could snag her first nomination as well for her hilarious performance as Deirdre. And though it's a long shot, I could even see a supporting nomination for screen veteran James Hong as Grandpa Gong Gong. There's imagination to spare here, but it eventually overpowers everything else you need to make a great movie.
For my money, the most over-hyped film of 2022, Everything, Everywhere All at Once is an elaborate and technically dazzling fantasy/black comedy that is rich with imagination, but said imagination controls the narrative turning the story pretentious, overly complex, and of course, overlong.
Evelyn is a hard-working but miserable owner of a laundromat who is in the midst of divorcing her loving husband, Waymond and is having trouble accepting the fact that her daughter, Joy, is a lesbian. Evelyn is also frustrated being the primary caregiver for her elderly father and is being audited by the IRS and is in serious danger of losing her business. As she, Waymond, and Grandpa sit down at the IRS with a hard-nosed auditor named Deirdre Beaubeirdre, Evelyn is confronted by a version of her husband from a different universe who offers to take Evelyn on a journey of the roads that she never chose that might have led to a different life for her.
Co-directors and co-screenwriters Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Swiss Army Man) have concocted what begins as a very simple character study of a troubled woman that balloons into a gargantuan and nonsensical fantasy that borrows elements from several other films, but covers them up with so much cinema pyrotechnics that sometimes they are hard to detect. The story that is initially offered, a look at what other ways Evelyn's life could have gone, eventually gets buried in a lot of artsy symbolism and blazing special effects that eventually come off as reasons why Evelyn's life is the way it is now, rather than what her life could have been.
Kwan and Scheinert deliver a textbook on just about every movie making technique the viewer can imagine, including borrowing plot elements from other movies. While watching, at least half a dozen movies flashed through my mind, including Back to the Future, The Terminator, Ratatouille, and A Christmas Carol, but each visit to an alternate life goes on way too long. Characters introduced in early parts of the film are reintroduced throughout the rest of the film for no discernable. The most aggravating part of the story is there is a point during the final third of the film where Evelyn appears to accept who her daughter is and, for some reason, it just makes a daughter even more angry, initiating a deadly battle with her that is one of the main reasons that the film is about 45 minutes longer than it needs to be.
The film has been generating serious Oscar buzz already and I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the spectacular production values, with special nods to editing and visual effects, which are both Oscar worthy. Michelle Yeoh deserves her first Oscar nomination as well for her rich and charismatic performance in the starring role, that keeps the viewer invested in spite of all the razzle dazzle surrounding her. Ke Huy Quan, who is best known for playing Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, is a bit annoying as Waymond but I loved Stephanie Hsu as Evelyn's daughter and Jamie Lee Curtis could snag her first nomination as well for her hilarious performance as Deirdre. And though it's a long shot, I could even see a supporting nomination for screen veteran James Hong as Grandpa Gong Gong. There's imagination to spare here, but it eventually overpowers everything else you need to make a great movie.