Originality is important in cinema, especially at the moment where the market is so heavily saturated in prosthetic heavy biopics, franchise sequels and bastardised live action remakes of Disney animations that a fresh story is relatively scarce to come by. So in this sense, Daniel Kwan’s and Daniel Scheinert’s (known collectively as the “Daniels”) absurdist action comedy ninja inspired family melodrama “Everything Everywhere All At Once” should be commended; it’s a highly creative premise and uniquely, even effectively at times blends a number of genres. Unfortunately, originality alone isn’t enough to result in a good quality film, and by every other available metric, “EEAAO” is a wash of half baked concepts deluded with philosophical grandeur and some talented actors who try their hardest to keep up with it all.
As I said, the core premise is a clever one; Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is a Chinese American immigrant who runs a laundromat with her timid and browbeaten husband Waymond (Ke Huy Kwan) and is at constant war with her gay daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), antagonising her even further when she introduces Joy’s girlfriend to the family patriarch Gong Gong (veteran actor James Gong) as her “very good friend” instead of her girlfriend. Evelyn is disenchanted with her life, and longs for excitement and adventure. While their business is being audited by humourless IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn is accosted by an alternate version of her husband who tells her that there are infinite parallel universes created by the choices that people make. A version of Evelyn created the technology necessary to jump across these universes and absorb the experiences and talents of all of individual’s alternate selves. Evelyn is now faced with the reality that a hellish, all powerful version of Joy, called Jobu, and Jobu’s army, are set to destroy the multiverse and Evelyn is the only one who can stop her.
One of the biggest issues with this film is that there is absolutely no subtlety, no nuance or even a brief moment of reprieve for the audience to properly process the story. And if the film was just an action, sci-fi, ninja kind of film then that might not matter, but it insists on being all of that as well as a family melodrama and an existential exploration of existence and the meaning of life as well as a critique on gay relationships within the Chinese culture. It just seems like every easy road that could have been taken has been taken; it’s far easier to hurl at an audience surface level profundity a dozen different ways rather than just properly exploring one or two. Oh and then for good measure they’ve thrown in some seriously lazy comedy because hey, these boys are deep but they can still have some fun. Perhaps the “Daniels” realised that they had bitten off more than their audience can chew, and knowing that they don’t have the time to spare that it would take to properly flesh out any of these themes, they’ve written dialogue that instructs the audience how they’re supposed to feel instead. “The Only Thing I Do Know Is That We Have To Be Kind. Please, Be Kind. Especially When We Don’t Know What’s Going On.” Goodie. They’re some quality Best Screenplay Oscar worthy words right there.
Performance wise, none of the lead roles are particularly strong. It’s almost insulting that Michelle Yeoh is being honoured for this considering how powerful she was in 2001’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (one of the best films of the 2000s). That was an Oscar worthy role; dignified and timeless with actual depth to her performance. To see her go from that to the crude spectacle of her scoring cheap laughs with kung fu sequences peppered with dildos, sausage fingers and butt plugs was embarrassing. As for Jamie Lee Curtis, this is probably one of the least deserved Best Supporting Actress Oscars ever awarded. What exactly does she do in this film that is so extraordinary? She wears an unflattering cardigan and a dowdy wig and delivers about a dozen lines of completely forgettable dialogue with no tonality in her voice. Some have argued that it’s a career Oscar (which all three were undoubtedly intended, in the same vein as Judi Dench and Alan Arkin), but since when has Jamie Lee Curtis been so valuable to Hollywood that a token Oscar was ever even warranted? She’s been in a handful of decent comedies, a couple of good action flicks and the Halloween horror series, so who knows, perhaps as she acknowledged, her status as a “nepo baby” has helped.
Even now I found it hard to see what else exactly “EEAAT” has going for it. The performances are lack lustre (as nice as it was to see Ke Huy Kwan be presented with an Oscar by Harrison Ford, it doesn’t take away the fact that neither he, Jamie Lee Curtis or Michelle Yeoh deserved their awards for these performances), the character development is almost non existent, the script is clumsy and heavy handed and the whole thing just felt a little cheap, and needed to be edited with a whipper snipper. The appeal in the creativity of the core story manages to creep through every once in a while, but is far too often lost in what is a truly garbled mess of a film, with no depth, no finesse and (as much as it might have tried), no heart.
By Jock Lehman
Lehman Loves A Movie 