Everything Everywhere All at Once: Its Michelle Yeohs World, We Just Live In It - Pura Pura Movie

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So Evelyn the one closest to our own reality must learn to draw upon these versions of herself, in a literal sense. One of the more clever turns of Everything Everywhere is its approach to skill acquisition, which, in a movie like The Matrix, was as comparatively straightforward as a series of programs uploaded into Keanu Reeves skull. Daniels have fashioned this movie into something closer to an RPG; skills must be earned. Evelyn must learn to level up. Which demands stepping outside of herself to the furthest realities of her own behavior, using her wits, stripping herself of shame and hesitancy, and diving headfirst into the wreck of nonsense that the filmmakers have created. It also means that Yeoh and her co-stars must navigate the fulsome range of styles Daniels have set up for them. A gritty-glamorous romance by way of Wong Kar-Wai, for example, full of that directors visual trademarks, the ecstatically speed-ramped images and overtly textured lighting. A training montage out of the kung fu movie playbook. A cute Ratatouille riff involving a raccoon. Its comically postmodern to the point of feeling almost retro, which also describes Everything Everywheres sense of action, its enriched sense of comedy colliding violence, practical materials (like fanny packs) taking their ranks amid the physically superhuman feats of choreography a mix many of us rightly associate with Jackie Chan.

The references make for pleasing pastiche. A few even manage to be salient by pointing back toward the careers and histories of the stars themselves: Yeohs work with Chan, for example, or, even more slyly, Quan s work with Wong Kar-Wai (whose romantic drama 2046 Wang assistant-directed). Its as goofy as it is riffy, and its not always energizing; some jokes or referential nods feel more belabored than others. Maybe least satisfying is the sexual humor, not because its crass, but because the gross-out approach feels a little one-note (as fun as it is to see someone cannonball onto a butt plug). But the stars manage, somehow, to make it mostly feel worth it not least in the case of Quan, who had once stepped away from the movie business thanks to a lack of good roles (and proves especially good as a hunky hero in this one), and Wang, a younger star who clearly relishes the chance to play good and bad, sexy-vicious and troubled, all within the same movie. (The only thing thats missing, on this front, is more variety from James Hong an actor whose number of movie credits is its own superheroic feat.)

Movies about multiverses sometimes spend too much time explaining themselves. There can be quite a bit to chomp through, from the what, to the how, to the impending dramatic implications of it all. But Everything Everywhere doesnt really start to sag under the weight of its concept until the last act, which plays a little too much like a compilation of extraordinary emotional resolutions: a series of discussions all rhythmically intercut to the point of obscuring their otherwise straightforward melodrama. Its a season finales worth of material packed into one elongated stretch of a movie, and the material is maybe not up to the grandiose approach of the filmmaking. Essentially, everyone hugs it out. Real selves and parallel selves, all at once. The endgame isnt quite up to the movies game. But the game is onto something.