Everything Everywhere All at Once

There are times when I see a movie that is embraced by the masses and I don't like it, but I get why people like it. And then, there are times when I am at a loss to see what people saw in a movie. This is one of those times. I do not get the love for this vapid, insultingly simplistic movie that not only emphasizes but depends in prioritizing style over substance. Here's the positive real quick: everything that isn't the script or the style in which this was filmed. Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan do so much heavy lifting, they might be Titans. Every drop of personality, every moment of life, every shred of spirit this movie has is because these two are doing their damnedest to inject something into the proceedings, and I commend them for it. Is it Oscar worthy? No. You don't deserve awards because you tried hard to save a sinking ship. But I do commend them for the effort. I really enjoyed their performances. Here endeth the praise. First, this movie is EXHAUSTING. The frenetic editing, the trickery with film formatting that extends to the aspect ratio, the overlapping parallel worlds, and there's almost two and a half hours of it. Once the plot kicks in, this movie almost never stops to let you catch your breath (save for the scene with the rocks, which was kind of amusing). I'm not against a white-knuckle thrill ride, but here's the thing; the best roller coaster has lulls, so you can have a moment of quiet for anticipation to build. Same with movies; they have to give you moments to contemplate character development, plot development, or just let you appreciate the movie as a whole, and EEAAO NEVER DOES THAT. It is a non-stop assault on the senses, like an Edgar Wright movie on PCP. The movie cannot and will not stop throwing something new at you every few seconds. The wife and I watched this in two halves, and I was thankful for it, because the first half was wearing me out ... but I also dreaded coming back to watch the second half, because I knew it would be more of the same. If it was just this non-stop barrage that was the problem, okay, fine, it's one of those hyper-cool, hipster movies that just isn't my thing. I could let that slide. But the carpet-bombing of the senses is there to hide the fact that this movie is emotionally and narratively barren. No, worse yet, what little morsels of narrative and emotion it has are so mind-numbingly stupid, so intelligence-insulting, and so simplistic, they're a giant middle finger to the audience. Almost 150 minutes for the movie to boil down to three things: 1) Be nice. 2) Positive nihilism. (?!?!?!?!?!) 3) Asian mothers and daughters have difficult relationships. Hey, movie? I saw that last one in Turning Red, and it was done with more care and consideration, because it put both mom AND daughter on a journey, instead of making the daughter a whiny millennial looking for a parental apology after finding out she wasn't special after all. And it's been central to the plot of many other Asian-American-centric movies. It's starting to feel cliched and, worse, reductive and borderline racist. I'm not Asian, but I'm still confident in saying not all Asian mothers are strict and humorless, and not all daughters are rebellious and carry a grudge. The other two things ... really? "Be nice"? "Nothing matters, so enjoy the small stuff"? I did not spend two and a half hours to get that at the end. We get an insulting, blithe, inspirational poster-simple nonsense as the moral, coupled with, somehow, a positive spin on feeling insignificant in the universe. I wasted 150 minutes of my life to be told I am a worthless speck but I should enjoy it. And this from people in the movie industry. The arrogance of being told I'm nothing and I should like it coming from people living out a one-in-a-million dream life of professional success via artistic expression is, at best, tone deaf. How about you try to have that point of view when you're pressing car parts in a factory or working a day job and a side hustle to cover rent? Not everyone is special -- that's what special means -- but this is some serious looking-down-the-nose, and I do not appreciate being condescended to by people who are in no position to vomit up hoary platitudes. But hey, if being beaten over the head with sensory overload and lectured on how you should live your life isn't bad enough, let's toss in sub-sophomoric humor, like the IRS agent whose name literally comes from The Name Game (you know, Willy-Willy-bo-billy, banana-fanna-fo-filly ...). There's "you have to do something weird to trigger a verse-jump" mechanic that literally exists only to facilitate "oh, look, weird behavior, isn't it funny?" gags like men jumping onto awards that look like buttplugs, or swallowing a ceramic frog, or wiping one's eyes with hand sanitizer. So funny! How about characters who are no more than the problems they have to solve and whose backstory comes down to a singular character trait. Nobody has depth in this movie; they're cardboard cutouts, assigned roles that facilitate the plot and nothing more. Worst of all, though, is that this movie's central conceit, the multiverse, is as much an afterthought as it has been in the MCU, and perhaps in a more frustrating way here. Those movies just had Doctor Strange or Spider-Man moving to other universes like a tourist. oh look, stoplights are green here! Oh look, Peggy Carter got the super-soldier serum! Here, the whole point of the multiverse is, ostensibly, to show Evelyn the other roads she travelled. She can draw on the skills and life experiences of other versions of herself. But the movie also wants the viewer to know that the prime Evelyn is miserable in her life; she has a dozen hobbies that could've led to other lives (cooking, singing, acting, karate), and she took none of those paths. What this movie doesn't do is EXPLORE those worlds. We see her as an actress or a karate master or a chef, but we don't know anything about those worlds. Is the grass greener in those other worlds, or do any of them feel the same as the "main" Evelyn, that their lives have something missing? If there was some kind of comparison in the narrative, any form of subjectivity that gave these other Evelyns depth and agency to contrast against the "main" Evelyn, it would only enrich the narrative and the viewer, especially if all the Evelyns were unhappy. That would actually underscore the movie's terrible morals. But EEAAO doesn't want to do this; the alternate universes are a crutch, a way to make this shell of a character suddenly have survival skills. What good is the multiverse concept in movies if movies aren't going to actually use it in telling their story? The way EEAAO treats it, the multiverse is a Skillshare subscription beamed directly into the brain. I had high hopes for this. I didn't think it would be this transformative experience, but I expected so much more than what I got. I am left wondering why the world was so taken with a movie that feels like someone leading on a cat with a laser pointer. Short of the actors doing their best their best to drag this carcass over the finish line, everything about this movie not only fails, but does so in the most frustrating way possible. The title really fits, because it described this movie's comprehensive failure.