Everything Everywhere wins top prize at Critics Choice Awards
The sci-fi hit Everything Everywhere All At Once, starring Michelle Yeoh as an immigrant mother who saves the multiverse, took top honours at the Critics Choice Awards on Sunday night, joining The Fabelmans (which won the Golden Globe for best drama earlier in the week) and The Banshees Of Inisherin (the Globe winner for best comedy or musical) as the three films to have won a major televised film award this Oscar season.
Those three films were also the only ones to earn top nominations last week from the producers, directors and acting guilds. The guild ceremonies won’t be held until the end of February, and since they share significant voter overlap with the academy, their winners could go all the way, as CODA did last year after it took the top PGA and SAG prizes. But until then, the race for best picture looks awfully competitive, with three very different theatrical features all in play.
“This award is dedicated to my dad, a Taiwanese immigrant who worked himself into an early grave,” said Jonathan Wang, a producer of Everything Everywhere, who held his statuette high and thanked “all the immigrant parents who would kill themselves for us immigrant children”.
Daniel Scheinert, who directed Everything Everywhere with Daniel Kwan, appeared gobsmacked upon taking the stage. “This is absurd,” exclaimed the filmmaker, who has said he never expected his film to turn into a significant awards contender. But Everything Everywhere notched several other significant wins at the Critics Choice Awards, with trophies handed to the film for its directing, editing and original screenplay.
The film had already tied the record for nominations from the group, with 14.
And though Yeoh lost in the best-actress category, her Everything Everywhere co-star Ke Huy Quan won the supporting-actor trophy, as he has all awards season. “I’m going to try real hard to not cry tonight,” said Quan, who is in the middle of a career comeback after first achieving fame as a child actor in The Goonies and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom.
Brendan Fraser referenced his own comeback while accepting the best actor award for The Whale.
“I was in the wilderness, and I probably should have left a trail of breadcrumbs,” said the star, who fell on hard times after a leading-man era that included The Mummy and George Of The Jungle. But like his character in The Whale, who struggles with his weight and self-worth, Fraser noted: “If you too can have the strength to just get to your feet and go to the light, good things can happen.”
Those moving moments gave the Critics Choice prizes some major oomph, although best-actress winner Cate Blanchett used her provocative speech to question the entire awardsshow industrial complex, give shoutouts to other performers who weren’t nominated, and implore the powers that be: “Stop the televised horse race of it all!”
Seconds later, her speech was interrupted by an orchestra eager to play her offstage.