Some films come along that feel like they’re trying to reinvent what a movie can do and Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of those. It leaps across genres, tones, and realities, refusing to settle for easy answers or bland sentiment.
It’s wild, funny, chaotic, but deeply human, anchored by a woman who just wants to balance tax forms, family expectations, and her own sense of purpose. This isn’t just sci-fi with weirdness; it’s an emotional multiverse journey that hits you in places you didn’t even know could feel.
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Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is drowning in life’s demands: her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) is kind but passive, their laundromat business is floundering, she’s facing an audit from the IRS, her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is distant, and Evelyn’s relationship with her demanding father Gong Gong (James Hong) is strained. She’s trying to please everyone, keep the business afloat, manage family expectations, and still feel like herself.
One day, Waymond from another universe (the Alpha Universe) shows up and tells Evelyn that the multiverse is in danger. There are infinite universes some somewhere Evelyn made different decisions and one of her other selves has gone rogue, threatening all the rest.
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To save everything, Evelyn must “verse-jump”: take on skills, personalities, and lives from her alternate selves. These jumps are absurd, hilarious, sometimes bizarre: there’s a taco-making Evelyn universe, a martial arts Evelyn, a universe full of hot dogs, another where rocks talk, etc.
Through all this chaos, fighting IRS agents, bizarre monsters, mis-communication, heartbreak, Evelyn’s core journey becomes clear. It’s not about power or perfection. It’s about connection, compassion, and accepting the messy parts of life. Her relationship with Joy, in particular, becomes the emotional anchor: Joy feels unseen, unvalued, suffocated by expectations; Evelyn learns over the chaos to see Joy not as a disappointment but as her own person. Along the way, Waymond’s optimism, Gong Gong’s generational pressures, Joy’s identity and fears, all collide in universes that mirror and magnify real life.
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The climax is both chaotic and tender: choices made in absurd universes have real consequences. Evelyn has to face the possibility that loss could be everywhere; that pain might be inevitable. Still, she holds onto kindness. She fights not with power but with empathy and love.
That moment when Evelyn tells Joy “I see you” means more than multiverse threats it means letting her daughter be herself. The ending doesn’t wrap everything perfectly (it doesn’t need to), but it leaves us with hope, with the idea that even when life seems overwhelming, the little connections matter, the kindness matters, the imperfect love matters.
Directors & Writers: Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert (“Daniels”)
Cast: Michelle Yeoh (Evelyn), Ke Huy Quan (Waymond), Stephanie Hsu (Joy), James Hong (Gong Gong), Jamie Lee Curtis, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr.
Runtime: 2h 12m
Watch trailer here.
