Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

‘If only,’ can hit you harder than a bullet.

If only you had taken that job. If only you had gone to that school. If only you had asked them out. If only you had not taken that drink.

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once is a sci-fi flick that uses the multiverse theory — that every decision we make leads to a new universe — as the backdrop for hi-jinks, comedy, and kung-fu action.

But the heart of it is “if only.”

Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) thinks her life would be better if only she had listened to her father and not married her husband, Waymond.

Perhaps her days wouldn’t revolve around their middle-class laundry business and her taxes. Perhaps her relationship with her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), would be better. Perhaps she would have found success in one of her many hobbies.

Instead, she’s in a marriage that’s teetering on the brink, she has a daughter she fails to appreciate, a father who is back in her life after decades of silence, and an IRS auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis) who seems to take sadistic pleasure in reaming people financially.

The joy of this movie is that the multiverse plot allows it to be a ton of different movies simultaneously. It’s well named because it is, indeed, everything, everywhere all at once.

For sci-fi reasons Evelyn — who we learn is the worst version of herself — has to connect with her multiverse counterparts. In one, she never marries and is a successful kung-fu action star, in another she’s a successful singer, there is one where humanity branched off in a strange way, and in another, she is a cook.

Yeoh, Curtis and Ke Huy Quan get to have a lot of actor fun playing different versions of their characters. But Hsu is a real breakout, getting to change personalities with just a look and stealing a lot of the movie as a tragic figure who is fighting with her parents in every reality.

The movie’s premise also allows it to insert several different movies, for a scene or two, inside the main narrative. So our characters get to play a high-class, fashion-conscious romance for a few scenes and then to do a wacky comedy moments later.

I think what is most impressive is that nearly every little scene and mini-movie is excellent in its own right. A flick like this should have tone problems or be in danger of flying off the rails. But it never does.

Everything feels right and everywhere the movie goes no matter how wild or wacky feels like home.

It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.