Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is a domestic drama-comedy that will knock your socks off even if you're not wearing socks. Be prepared to surrender before you enter.
We meet a struggling immigrant Chinese family trying to run a mega laundromat, with a hapless husband/father waving divorce papers around in order to get his wife's attention. Once you get the drift of the plot, you are swept up in a reality you couldn't anticipate. It turns out the frustrated wife and mother (Michelle Yeoh) is the center of the multiverse, governed (I think) by a team from the megaverse who need to force her to change her world once and for all. First she must face her own superpowers and confront her inner conflicts and own her magic.
To call this movie unique is such an understatement that it defies its own definition. Even to call it a movie is an understatement. It is an experience. Okay, it's done with camera tricks, Kung Fu, and the pushing of magic buttons, but each flash of insight challenges and entertains the audience. In the process, the aforementioned hapless husband Waymond is transformed into a messenger from the megaverse--and a Jackie Chan martial arts master--and Evelyn, the wife, gets flashes from her past comparable to those entertained by Ebenezer Scrooge in the fable from another universe. Their daughter Joy is transformed into some kind of Hollywood spirit guide who has all the answers (beginning with "Nothing matters.") but doesn't seem to like the questions. There is Evelyn's haunting quest ("Where is my Joy?") and a score of bizarre family members and peripheral characters following each other around with weapons of mass destruction, and the constant refrain of Evelyn's magnificence from awards ceremonies and performances.
I never said it was going to be easy, but the trip is full of laughs and wonder. I began to wish I could remember where my old evening gowns were. I began to fall in love with Waymond, who we saw in full potential as a confident millionaire as well as his default position of lost loser. Jamie Lee Curtis has a great time as the most vulnerable villain in recent memory. Through it all I was surrounded in the live theater (and I recommend you see it in a theater, surrounded by live people) who gasped, chortled, and laughed spontaneously as the scenes unfolded before us all. There were moments when the movie tried to conclude and we all felt, "Okay, that's enough," and then picked up again to give us yet another twenty minutes, almost ad infinitum. But there was an exhilaration about it all. I came away having found my joy!
