Everything Everywhere All At Once review: Michelle Yeoh deserves the best of all worlds

Note: This article was first published on 6 April 2022.

This is Michelle Yeoh's world and we just live in it. Everything Everywhere All At Once is literally everything all at once – it is a hilariously vulgar work of art interspersed with eye-watering comedy, then topped off with a massive dose of some of the most enthralling action choreography sequences in a film this year.

But at the heart of it all is Michelle Yeoh, showing why she deserves the best of every single world in this delightful multiversal mess. Yeoh plays Evelyn Wang, the harried owner of a laundromat under IRS audit. She barely has time for anything, not even her meek husband Waymond, played to perfection by Chinese-American actor Ke Huy Quan.

Meanwhile, Evelyn's daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is trying valiantly to get her mother to even notice her girlfriend, and Evelyn's attempts to sweep the whole thing under the rug are the perfect representation of an Asian mother's superhuman powers of denial.

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Despite the seemingly dysfunctional nature of their relationships, Evelyn and her family are the beating heart of the film, and directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert spin a fantastical tale around the trio that spans multiple universes.

The film finds a balance between the thoughtful and farcical, wildly careening from piercing existential questions to guys trying to stick souvenirs up their butts in order to access skills possessed by their other selves in another universe. It is a testament to the writing and direction that the show never feels off-kilter or difficult to follow, which means there is also never a dull moment.

This silliness is part of the film's charm – imagine being a googly-eyed rock in some far-off universe, debating questions about the meaning of existence on a cliff's edge with another rock. It never takes itself too seriously, while still delving deep into questions about choices, regret, and whether anything we do really matters. The show also scratches the itch to find out what our lives would be like if we made a different choice, or just took a different job.

People inevitably shut the door on myriad potential futures when they take a fork in the road. If we followed the road not taken, would our lives have been better? The multiverse is the perfect conceit to answer that question – every time you make a choice, a branch universe is created where you made a different decision. And if you're like Evelyn, you can explore the countless possibilities of a thousand other lives lived.

While the film's big bad argues that nothing really matters because of how insignificant we all are in the face of a multiversal cosmos, it tempers its cynicism with the realisation that all we have is the present moment and each other.

Despite its sausage-finger shenanigans, raccoon chefs, and middle-aged ladies who also happen to be sumo wrestlers in a parallel universe, Everything Everywhere All At Once never descends into ludicrousness. It is a remarkable feat that Kwan and Scheinert did not allow the human heart of the show to be buried under the cosmic weight of it all and the sheer visual spectacle of multiple manic sequences stitched together.

For all its talk about multiple universes, the show remains centred on the individuals that drive the story and the paths they have taken (or did not take). There are an infinite number of possible selves within us, just as Waymond morphs from timid husband to highly-trained fighter that can take down multiple security guards with just a fanny pack.

Similarly, IRS agent Deirdre, who is almost immaculate in terms of how distasteful she is thanks to a spot-on performance by Jamie Lee Curtis, is a humourless paper-pusher in one universe and a tender romantic in another.

As Evelyn, Yeoh is the picture of charisma, grace, and comedic wit. From the mundane task of sorting through laundromat receipts to taking on cosmic villains, Yeoh rises to every occasion wonderfully.

In a time when the concept of the multiverse is no longer anything novel (and on the cusp of the release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), Everything Everywhere All At Once still manages to be incredibly refreshing in the sheer breadth of its imagination and the daring audacity of its portrayals.

Human existence is absurd, incredibly messy, and downright infuriating at times, the film seems to say, but that's okay. After all, we make our own meaning.

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