'Everything Everywhere' overwhelms with possibilities

Wonderfully ridiculous and life-affirming

Kirk Boxleitner | Apr 21, 20220

Courtesy photo count

A hilariously probability-pressing multiverse keeps delivering hits in "Everything Everywhere All at Once."

"Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" premieres May 6, but in spite of how much I'm a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and of director Sam Raimi in particular, I'm sure that film has already been outshined by A24's "Everything Everywhere All at Once," a multiversal sci-fi action comedy martial-arts slice-of-life indie-film drama co-produced by the same Russo brothers who directed some of the biggest big-screen hits of the MCU, plus some of the funniest episodes of "Community."

It's about a struggling first-generation Chinese-American family that runs a barely solvent laundromat and is being audited by the IRS. Emotionally closed-off mom Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) adamantly refuses to communicate with her kind-hearted, put-upon husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) and their existentially aimless daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) that Waymond is trying to hand divorce papers to Evelyn while Joy tries to get Evelyn to accept her girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel).

It's also about a destructive embodiment of nihilism whose influence is gradually spreading across every timeline in the multiverse, as an alternate reality version of Waymond tells Evelyn that only she can defeat this adversary. Of all the possible outcomes of the multiverse, no other version of Evelyn Wang has failed so totally at everything she's ever done than this Evelyn, which makes her the most resilient Evelyn of all.

Evelyn learns how "verse-jumpers" are able to share the memories, and emulate the skill sets, of their alternate universe selves by engaging in statistically improbable acts, which leads to hilariously slapstick mob brawls of hand-to-hand combat between players whose bodies are possessed by their alternate selves, as they do gratuitously goofy things to activate the abilities they're borrowing from adjacent realities.

The realm of possibilities that's explored extends to the extreme ends of the probability curve as Evelyn and her opponents manifest in realities where humans are animated sketch drawings, living piñatas, rocks with stick-on googly eyes or even evolved to have hot dogs for fingers.

And while it's perhaps expected that one of Evelyn's divergent timelines would cast her as a martial-arts movie star not unlike Yeoh's real-life self, far less expected is a running subplot about the love-hate relationship, throughout the multiverse, between Evelyn and the emotionally wounded IRS inspector who's auditing her (Jamie Lee Curtis), including the universe in which they're a lesbian couple with hot dog fingers.

As manic and bizarre as everyone's actions become, and as impossible as the possibilities of the multiverse's wildly divergent branches become, this film retains a remarkably heartfelt throughline of people inflicting thoughtless hurt upon each other by putting up walls around themselves, as Ke Huy Quan's Waymond - yes, Short Round from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," all grown up - reveals himself to be the unexpectedly steely moral center of the narrative, for all the same reasons everyone else pities him as a weak milquetoast.

Because if the profound despair of realizing that nothing actually matters is poised to swallow every possible reality that could exist, then what could be stronger or more subversive than deciding that, if nothing means anything, then there's no reason not to be kind and humane?

In keeping with the absurdism of the rest of this film, Evelyn combines her martial arts with a distinct set of kindnesses to heal each of her opponents in precisely the ways they need.

More importantly, Evelyn gets over herself enough to be emotionally present for her daughter, her husband, her old-world grandfather (James Hong, as spry and sly as ever at 93 years old) and even her IRS agent adversary, who just needs some love too.

This film is wonderfully ridiculous and life-affirming and pulls the rug out from under you, and I guarantee it will make you feel better about our infinitesimally small place in the grand scheme of things, because if there's no bigger truth or deeper meaning to any of it, then there's nothing stopping us from choosing who we want to become.