It’s a joy to watch Yeoh go here
ANSWER me this, Nobel physicists: what do you call a multitude of multiverses? A multimultiverse? The infiniverse? Whatever the word, it is what’s afflicting — oh, gosh — multiplexes at the moment. After last week’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, we now have another film about overlapping, parallel universes. This one is called Everything Everywhere All At Once, presumably because it originated in a universe without commas.
But, really, it’s the differences between the two films that stand out, rather than their cosmic similarities. Everything Everywhere isn’t the next stage of Marvel’s global supremacy plan.
It is, instead, the latest release from A24, the New York-based film company behind such inventive, independent-spirited fare as 2019’s Uncut Gems and last year’s The Green Knight. What’s more, Everything Everywhere stars Michelle Yeoh.
In fact, technically speaking, it stars lots of Michelle Yeohs. And that is a very good thing indeed. At the beginning, though, this is not the Yeoh we know: the balletic martial artist from films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Here, she plays Evelyn Wang, off some of that A24 inventiveness. There are different universes, different chronologies and even different cinematic styles — peculiarly, one of the alternate worlds is a dead ringer for Wong Kar-wai’s In The Mood For Love (2000). Yet co-director-writers Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert manage to make it all cohere.
And Yeoh gets to show off, too. Turns out, there’s an alternate-universe version of Evelyn Wang who made a few different life choices and ended up as, basically, Michelle Yeoh — a kung fu superstar. Wang ‘verse-jumps’ (don’t ask) to gain the same skills, and starts punching and pirouetting her way through a series of increasingly colourful fight scenes.
Followed by more fight scenes. There probably is a point at which Everything Everywhere lives up to its name and becomes too much. In its search for a meaning, the film can’t decide between about three, so it just goes on with more brawls, more movie references, more puerile gags and more sentiment.
But, still, more Yeoh is more Yeoh. There may be some awful universe where she isn’t one of the most capable, likeable frontwomen in film, but, thankfully, it’s not this one.