Everything Everywhere All at Once

I think Swiss Army Man was more interesting as a zany concept than an actual movie, but this does look impressive.

I mean, if you’re going to do a multiverse movie, at least do so firing on all visual cylinders. And hire the great Michelle Yeoh and James Hong.

There was a bit of uncertainty around the release date of this in Ireland the last week or two. A UK release date of May 13th was announced, but then the Light House said they'd been told May 20th for Ireland. But now it seems as if it's May 13th here after all as well. So not long left to go at all, and seems Cineworld has an Unlimited Screening on May 10th as well.

The rapturous response from the US has me both excited and somewhat cautious! As an aside though, I didn't pick out from the trailer that Ke Huy Quan, one of the leads, is 'Short Round' from Indiana Jones and 'Data' in The Goonies. He's been getting lots of praise for his work here (alongside Yeoh and the rest of the cast) and really great to see him having a career renaissance after all these years.

I mean, does time *really* mean anything anymore?

(But yes, May :P)

I enjoyed it a lot, with a few reservations.

The two Daniels really went all in with the visual and editing potential of the multiverse concept. The film is visually chaotic, and I mean that in a good way. Images are constantly clashing and overlapping and breaking apart and that’s exactly how it should be. ‘Multiverses’ are in vogue in superhero land now, but not one of them (apart from Spiderverse, naturally!) has or will have a fraction of the filmmaking imagination this one has. Whether it’s a pitch perfect Wong Kar Wai homage or a bizarre Ratatouille satire, there’s never a shortage of cool ideas on display. The frequent fight scenes are shot with clarity and oomph, and the storytelling and flow remains coherent even when images only stick around for a few frames (if even, in the film’s most striking multiverse collisions).

Michelle Yeoh is always great, and Ke Huy Quan is a delight. Kudos to Jamie Lee Curtis for being so game for everything.

High concept stuff aside, the underlying story of family and the power of kindness is sweet if a little simplistic and predictable. It’s definitely charming overall, but a certain amount of repetition does set in as the film progresses. It’s quite a long film and despite the relentless pace it does kind of get caught up repeating itself or over-egging the pudding a good few times. Thankfully there are lots of delightful, warm-hearted moments in the extended finale that make it worthwhile. I did feel they maybe made Evelyn a bit too much of an asshole in the first half of the film - if our sympathies weren’t naturally drawn to Michelle Yeoh, that’d be more of an issue.

It’s perhaps the humour that left me most on the fence. Don’t get me wrong, some of it is very funny. But between this and Swiss Army Man I’m definitely not totally on Daniels’ wavelength when it comes to gags. Some of the ‘bits’ here definitely overstay their welcome, including a few that weren’t super funny first time around (personally could’ve done with fewer visits to the hotdog universe). Again, there are definitely funny bits - and your mileage will vary! But the rapid fire humour ranges from random dildo gags to high-concept visual flights of fancy, so it’s no surprise the hit rate is a bit all over the place.

But all in all it’s anarchic fun - all over the place by design, and generally better for it. I honestly found my impressions of it wavering as it went along - it’s quite the voyage - but ultimately I think I settled on ‘this is pretty good’. That makes for a plenty worthwhile Friday night at the cinema.

My understanding is A24 released this themselves directly in Ireland & the UK (as opposed to through another distributor as they usually do), and there was plenty of confusion around cinema release dates. So I wouldn't be surprised if there was also some confusion / messiness around the VOD launch.