Everything Everywhere All at Once

 

Everything Everywhere All at Once (Amazon Prime)

If you have any drugs left over from the 70’s stashed in your sock draw this is the time to use them. The film is chaotic, the scenes are not sequential. It’s like a Chinese Matrix, but without the pretense. Characters shift  between different parallel universes, called the Alphaverse. In these realities there are alpha versions of themselves. This movie has a little bit of everything for everyone. There is a racoon sushi chef, people with hot dogs for fingers, kung fu, butt plugs (used offensively), google eyes, an everything bagel as a black hole and talking boulders.

The movie starts with Evelyn, played by Michelle Yeoh, and her husband Waymond, played by Ke Huy Quan (Quan played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Data in The Goonies) at the IRS office audited by aggressive agent played by Jamie Lee Curtis. It is from here the characters start shifting between realities. Contributing to the turmoil, Evelyn’s demanding father, played by the prodigious James Hong (he has 650 film credits) arrived from Hong Kong and her daughter Joy, played by Stefanie Hsu, is trying to introduce her girlfriend to the family. Though out the movie these characters take on different personas. This film does not take itself seriously and some of the fight scenes are hilarious. Yeoh and Hsu give endearing performances and Jamie Lee Curtis in a fat suit and a platinum wig stolen from Andy Warhol’s closet is over the top.

Putting aside all the chaos this is a story about relationships and of what could have been. The alternate realities give expression to different paths. Relationships are with a mother accepting a daughter, dealing with an aging demanding father and a husband reluctantly serving divorce papers to his unsuspecting wife. This movie is different but worthwhile. At the reduced price of $5.99 how can you go wrong.