Here lies Everything Everywhere All at Once, a film with the subtlety of a nuclear-powered kazoo and the narrative restraint of a toddler hopped up on Fun Dip. It’s the cinematic equivalent of someone screaming “LOOK AT ME!” for two and a half hours while chucking bagels, butt plugs, and emotional speeches directly at your skull. Written and directed by the Daniels (Kwan and Scheinert), the duo behind Swiss Army Man—a film best remembered for a farting corpse—this movie is their attempt to explore the multiverse and the meaning of life. Unfortunately, they tackle both with the energy of a philosophy major having a manic episode during finals week.
At its center is Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), a laundromat owner juggling taxes, a failing marriage, a rebellious daughter, and a father who looks like he escaped from a 1950s propaganda reel. She’s being audited by Jamie Lee Curtis, who looks like a sentient W-2 form. Then, suddenly, the multiverse cracks open like a piñata filled with nihilism and ADHD. Evelyn is told she’s the “chosen one” in a war across infinite universes. Why her? Because she’s terrible at everything, and apparently that makes her the perfect conduit to channel every version of herself—including a hibachi chef, a kung-fu queen, and a woman with hot dog hands who plays the piano with her feet. No, I’m not making that up.
What follows is a kaleidoscopic blender of sci-fi tropes, martial arts throwdowns, and more costume changes than a Lady Gaga concert. The plot leaps dimensions like a sugar-high lemur: one moment we’re in an IRS office, the next we’re in a universe where people are rocks. Literal rocks. With googly eyes. The Daniels clearly believe more is more. More visuals, more jokes, more screaming, more Michelle Yeoh flying through drywall in slow motion while talking about the void. If excess were a cinematic language, this would be Shakespeare—but for the rest of us, it’s like trying to read Ulysses while getting slapped in the face with a rubber chicken.
And it never shuts up. The movie is loud. Not just in decibels, but in mood. Every frame is an assault—on your eyes, your ears, your neurons. Dialogue is either shouted, sobbed, or whispered while bleeding. Visuals are edited with the grace of a blender stuck on purée. There’s a sincere monologue happening while someone gets karate-chopped with a BDSM trophy. And don’t get me started on the “everything bagel,” which is both a cosmic metaphor and a literal baked good, representing the ultimate nihilistic spiral—because when you put everything on a bagel, nothing matters. Get it? Get it?! Of course you do. Because they explain it. Six times.
There’s an emotional throughline buried somewhere beneath the detritus of meme-tier visuals and narrative chaos. Evelyn’s fractured relationship with her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), is supposed to be the heart of the story. But like a TikTok comment thread about trauma, it’s surface-level deep. The movie gestures at generational pain, cultural disconnection, and the immigrant experience—but just when it’s about to land something meaningful, it throws in a raccoon voiced by Randy Newman or a slap-fight involving sentient paperclips.
Michelle Yeoh does her best to bring dignity to the circus, but even she can’t rescue the film from its own self-congratulatory cleverness. Ke Huy Quan, playing her meek husband Waymond, delivers a few tender moments, but they’re buried beneath so many stylistic detours it feels like emotional whiplash. Jamie Lee Curtis chews scenery like she’s auditioning for American Gladiators: IRS Edition. And Stephanie Hsu’s villain, Jobu Tupaki, is essentially a Hot Topic philosophy major armed with glitter, chaos, and a costume budget that could fund three seasons of Power Rangers.
The Daniels want to say something profound about meaninglessness, about finding love in the void, about how every moment matters. But their method of delivery is like trying to read Camus through a strobe light while someone force-feeds you Pop Rocks. The emotional beats are so drenched in irony, so manic in their setup, that when they finally whisper “just be kind,” you’re too dazed to care.
And let’s talk tone. Is it a comedy? A sci-fi thriller? A tearjerker? A Kung-Fu homage? All of the above, apparently, but instead of blending seamlessly, it’s like channel surfing during an earthquake. The whiplash is real. One moment you’re laughing at a universe where people fight with trophies up their rectums, the next you’re supposed to cry over a mother telling her daughter “I see you in every universe.” Sorry, but emotional resonance doesn’t survive being sandwiched between slow-motion dildo combat and a talking raccoon.
The film’s fans will tell you it’s bold, it’s original, it’s the future of cinema. But originality doesn’t mean effectiveness. It’s different, yes—but so is drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth. Just because something hasn’t been done doesn’t mean it should be. Everything Everywhere All at Once is less a film and more a three-ring circus being live-streamed by a philosophy major who just discovered ketamine and string theory.
Final Verdict?
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a film with a heart, buried under fifteen layers of genre pastiche, Reddit-core aesthetics, and existential screaming. It’s clever but not smart, emotional but not earned, and relentless in the way a dog is when it doesn’t realize it’s already dropped the ball. Watch it if you think sensory overload is a personality trait, or if you want to feel like your third eye is being waterboarded with kaleidoscopic trauma. Everyone else? Save your sanity and just eat an actual everything bagel. At least it won’t try to teach you the meaning of life between jokes about butt plugs.
