Mary: We’ve gathered here today to talk about Everything Everywhere All at Once, the new movie directed by Daniels, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, and starring Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, and Ke Huy Quan. It’s difficult to describe this movie, I think, but I’ll say that it’s a sci-fi look at family and the infinite possibilities of the multiverse, told through the eyes of Evelyn (Yeoh), the matriarch of the Wang family. Needless to say, we’re going to spoil some things.

I’m kind of the target demographic for this story, I think. I love a good intergenerational trauma story, and I’m a sucker for all things science fiction and trippy. I also absolutely adore Michelle Yeoh, and I was thrilled to see her star in this. Plus, I’m always willing to give an A24 joint a shot. What drew y’all in to see this one? 

Emily: Honestly, I knew nothing about it going into it except that Michelle Yeoh was in it. And my friend “Wizzie” aka Sailor Moon Wisdom saw it and loved it, so I was like cool, I’ll see it. And I’m so glad I knew next to nothing, because that made this so fun. Afterwards, I watched the trailer, because I was like “Now how did they sell this movie?” And I’m glad I didn’t see the trailer until after. 

Kelli: Unlike Emily, I did see the trailer several times beforehand, and what drew me in were the googly eyes.

Really, though, I am also a fan of A24 and Michelle Yeoh, and I’m always drawn to indie sci-fi, as well as films that have an original premise. It was obvious from the jump that this movie would be extremely creative if nothing else and for that reason I was curious. Then the rave reviews and endorsements started flooding in, many from directors I admire, so I immediately bought a ticket!

I will say that I was not a big fan of Daniels’ 2016 feature film debut Swiss Army Man (even though it had another of my favorite Daniels — Radcliffe — making for triple the Daniel). So if I had any skepticism going into this film, it was my moderate distaste for that one. I am, however, a fan of their music video for “Turn Down for What,” which remains an iconic masterpiece to this day.

Mary: Noooo I loved Swiss Army Man! How can you not like a farting corpse that helps someone unearth deep emotions?!

Kelli: You can’t tell me you liked that ending!

Emily: I also love Swiss Army Man. You are outnumbered, Kelli. 

I feel like we might need to do things a little bit differently with this movie, which is fitting because the movie is so different. But I’m going to go out on a limb and just say we rate it right away and then talk about it. Wild, I know. But hear me out. I just feel like there’s so much to talk about in this movie, and I think it’s going to be pretty clear early on how we feel about this one, so maybe we should just go ahead and say it?

Emily: All of this is to say I gave the movie five stars, and it’s my favorite movie I’ve seen so far this year. I laughed. I cried. I didn’t fall asleep even though it was 2 ½ hours long. I didn’t even get up to go to the bathroom. So success all around. How do y’all feel?

Kelli: Same, same, same. Five stars. It was great. I can’t wait to watch it again. I also laughed a lot and cried multiple times. Another thing that impressed me about this movie was that it had so many points towards the end where it was like — is this going to be the ending? Or is this going to be? Or is this going to be? And usually when a movie is like that, I’m like “okay, I’m ready for this to be over.” Each possible ending would’ve been great here, but I feel like all of the final moments were earned and none of them took away from me enjoying the movie as a whole. I point this out because, again, the place where Swiss Army Man totally lost me was at the end, and this movie did not lose me, and I was glad.

Mary: I also say five stars, and more if I could. I truly loved everything about this film, from the production to the story and everything in between. It was so delightfully weird and wasn’t afraid to take risks, which I always love.

Kelli: I want to know what made everyone cry.

Emily: Well, I think for anyone who has a complex relationship with their mother, there’s a lot that’s going to hit home here. I related to a lot of the mother/daughter stuff. These are two women with strong personalities and strong senses of self. Neither of them are bad people, but they don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, and they have difficulty communicating, and that is one of the driving forces of the story. 

Oddly enough, one of the moments that really got me was when Evelyn (Yeoh, the mother) and Joy (Stephanie Hsu, the daughter) were both rocks with googly eyes. It really works on two levels because on one hand, it’s silly. They’re rocks with googly eyes. But on the other hand, when the Joy rock starts dragging away from the Evelyn rock, and the Evelyn rock drags herself (itself?) towards the Joy rock… yeah, I cried.

Kelli: I also cried during the rocks! I think the rock scene was my favorite part.

Mary: I definitely had a complicated relationship with my mom, and in a lot of spots in the movie I found Evelyn saying things that I wished I could hear my mom say to me. I think one of the best things a mom can do is be supportive and understanding, and by the end of the film I think Evelyn came around to communicate that to Joy. She fought for Joy and worked to save her, and I guess I’ve spent a lot of my life wishing someone cared enough to fight like that for me. Bummer.

I definitely cried during some of those more emotional scenes, where Evelyn was trying to show Joy how much she cared, but struggled with it. I think my mom struggled with showing how she felt sometimes, too, which is one reason why I try so hard to…not do that. I don’t know. It’s okay to cry, okay to feel vulnerable. 

Part of Evelyn’s struggle is this intergenerational trauma. We see that she’s hard on Joy because her parents were hard on her. They weren’t willing to fight for her happiness or accept her, and that stuck with her for the rest of her life, translating to Evelyn being unable to publicly be proud of her daughter and her daughter’s girlfriend. It sucks to not have your parents on board with a relationship, but it’s even worse for them to refuse to even acknowledge it. 

BUT, I do think that Evelyn breaks the cycle by the end. And it’s not a perfect break. I think Evelyn will struggle with communicating better, but it’s a start, and a significant one.

Kelli: Yes to all of this. I loved that part of breaking that cycle was that Evelyn had to “let go” of her daughter, only to realize that letting go doesn’t have to mean a complete severance. It’s more about letting go of unfair expectations of your kid, letting them be their own person. 

Joy becomes the film’s villain, Jobu Tupaki, because of the way parallel universe Evelyn pushed her past her limits the way parents often do — obsessed with a child’s potential for greatness over the child’s emotional well-being. The way all of this unfolds is, I think, a great analogue for trauma and mental illness. To me, Jobu Tupaki reads as a representation of the most painful aspects of depression, an embrace of meaninglessness to the point of self-destruction, and I think it’s important that Evelyn not only has to be the one to pull Joy back from the brink, but also has to recognize that Joy’s predisposition to depression comes from Evelyn herself. 

I was also really touched by the queer aspects of this story, and the struggle Joy has in getting her mom to understand and accept this thing about her. I’ve definitely had conversations with my mom that felt a lot like some of the conversations Joy and Evelyn were having about Joy’s sexuality — the way Evelyn is trying to be open and accepting while simultaneously being totally dismissive of Joy’s experience. I really appreciated that we got to see a parallel universe in which Evelyn has a meaningful queer experience of her own, even if it involves hot dog fingers. Pretty sure I cried during that part too — when Evelyn tells Jamie Lee Curtis’ character, Deidre, that there are always things to love, and that even in a universe where we can’t use our hands, “we get really good with our feet.”

Mary: Oh, absolutely. In a way, Evelyn having a relationship with Deidre in one universe helps her understand from a first-person perspective what Joy might be feeling. While that’s certainly not the same, it’s something, and it’s nice. I just wish they didn’t have hot dog fingers. 

Emily: The hot dog fingers made me cry. 

Just kidding.

Mary: So I really enjoyed this movie on a technical level, too. I’m not knowledgeable enough to know a bunch of movie terms, really, but I think Daniels used practical effects really well. The lighting, with lots of close-ups showing off the different angles of lights, made me feel like the characters were really transporting to other universes, even though there weren’t any fancy special effects happening. 

Kelli: For sure. There’s a great interview on Wired with Daniels and their visual effects artist Zak Stoltz where they run through some of their processes for the visuals, one being the multiverse jumps, and it’s super interesting to see the hacks they used to accomplish what they did with their independent film budget. They talk about how this film has almost 500 VFX shots, and how they did all of this with a team of only five people, which is basically unheard of. 

Emily: I know that from a technical aspect, the process of creating and transitioning to different multiverses was not at all simple. But as a viewer, I appreciated how simple the finished product appeared. I didn’t have to think too much about how the multiverses worked or why it worked in this way. And yet at the same time, enough was explained and shown that I bought into it.

Honestly, the only part that made me go “huh” was the butt plug moment. Because seriously you expect me to believe that two different people become expert fighters in a different version of the universe just from sticking something up their butt? What is this dimension where everyone is sticking things up their butt and then training in martial arts? I mean… I guess in a multiverse of infinite possibilities, it has to be possible. 

And this was the moment where I was like “Okay, I can’t think about the butt plugs too much.” But literally that was the only moment. And usually in movies like these there are several moments where I think, “Okay, I can’t think about that too much or it doesn’t work anymore.”

Mary: Then later you see those guys again and they still have the things up their butts. Lol.

This is my favorite kind of science fiction, where nothing needs to be explained too much, but there’s just enough reasoning to make sense and get the viewer on board. I kept expecting the movie to have a twist where this was all just in Evelyn’s head and none of it happened, but we end knowing that yes, it was absolutely all real. A lot of films that have a kind of supernatural or science fiction twist insist that a character be hit on the head, or it all be a dream, but Everything Everywhere All at Once proves you can take a bonkers concept and really make it work all the way through, no need to justify it. 

It was kind of funny that we saw a trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness before Everything Everywhere All at Once because woof, talk about different takes on multiverses. Marvel comics are obsessed with multiverse theory, but every time they do it, it seems like the other universes are just RADICALLY different from everything else. I mean, I guess that works for comic book movies, but is that really how it would be? I appreciated that the other universes in Everything Everywhere All at Once were simultaneously very different and the same. Evelyn was always driven, always herself, but sometimes that translated into her being a chef, or her being a kung-fu action star. Of course, then there were like, really weird ones. Hot dog fingers.

Emily: I honestly would have liked more worlds where the characters had different kinds of bodies, because I feel like there would be more body variants in different worlds. Like a world where everyone is taller. Or a world where Evelyn is blind. Or a world where Evelyn is in a wheelchair. I don’t know.

Kelli: Or a world where everyone has butt plugs for fingers.

I liked the idea that in order to access a faraway multiverse version of oneself, the characters had to calculate the least statistically probable action they could take and perform that action. It was a really clever and funny way to explain something unexplainable. The different universes they came up with were so much fun, particularly hot dog fingers and Racacoonie.

Emily: Every time the raccoon was on screen, I laughed. 

Kelli: Obviously, thinking too hard about any of the sci-fi elements here would make your brain explode, but it was easy enough to let go and enjoy the ride. The scene towards the end of the film where Evelyn is accessing all of her different skills from the various multiverses to fight through the IRS office building is truly iconic, and the fact that the last section of the film has… at least five (?) storylines playing out simultaneously, all with Evelyn at the center and all of them successful in their execution, is a testament to the craftsmanship that went into this film on every level.

Mary: I have to say, because I’ve been saying it since I read it myself, Jonathan Ke Quan who played Waymond has not acted in YEARS, but he immediately signed on when he heard about this project and that Michelle Yeoh was starring. He is phenomenal, I think! His performance was so emotional, and I immediately felt connected to his gentler view of masculinity. I also love that over the course of the film, Evelyn goes from disliking how gentle he is to really appreciating and loving it. Waymond is strong in different ways, and his patience and understanding are parts of that. 

Kelli: Quan was so, so good, and their relationship was another part of the movie that really hit me emotionally in a way it wouldn’t have if his performance weren’t so strong. He is obviously hilarious throughout, but like you said Mary, this is a really emotive and sensitive performance as well. The scenes in the Kung fu universe particularly stick out to me — when they’re outside in the alley à la In the Mood For Love. That version of Waymond is so different from the one we get to know in the first universe we’re introduced to, but you can see how that person developed from the same mold, and how moving through the world without each other changed them both, for better and worse. I am a sucker for stories where people are drawn to each other over and over again (e.g. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and to me it was so lovely and romantic that they find each other again in that multiverse and still recognize a deep connection between them. 

Mary: Quan is also going to be in Disney’s adaptation of American Born Chinese, which I’m pumped about! Truly, this movie is just doing so many good things, I can’t keep up with how to talk about it.

Emily: I totally agree! I thought Quan was so good in this, and I would have had no idea that this was his first project since he was a child if you hadn’t told me. Really, I thought all of the performances were amazing. Stephanie Hsu, who played Joy, was also really good. And honestly, in another actor’s hands, Jamie Lee Curtis’ Deirdre could have been sort of a throwaway roll, or one note. But it’s clear with the casting of Curtis that they wanted to bring depth to this character, and they got it.

Kelli: Stephanie Hsu was so fantastic. One of the things she did as Jobu Tupaki was say things in this terrifying baby voice and I don’t know how she managed to make that work, but she did.

Mary: Absolutely. Hsu was fantastic and I hope this role proves she can be simultaneously very cute and scary at the same time. She’s had a great career on Broadway so far, so no surprise that she has range! Also, her costumes as Jobu Tubaki – perfection.

Kelli: Also notable: Jenny Slate. She was hilarious as usual, but the entire scene where she is fighting Evelyn using her tiny dog as a weapon had me d y i n g. There’s one shot where the dog is flying through the air and you see its little paws in the corner of the screen as it goes… I lost it.

Mary: Forever thankful that the dog and racoon were very very fake. I hate real animals getting thrown around. 

Emily: Also I just need to note that apparently Randy Newman plays the raccoon, although he is uncredited in the film. 

Kelli: That is incredible. 

Mary: Truly stunning. I can’t think of one bad thing to say about this film, and that’s saying something because I love to complain about movies. 

Emily: I know, and I feel bad because as a reader, I love people talking shit about things. So if that’s what you came here for… I got nothing. Kelli, any critiques? 

Kelli: I really just thought hard about it for thirty seconds, but I also have nothing.

Mary: Well, there you have it. This is a perfect movie. If you disagree or have additional comments, be sure to let us know!