Everything Everywhere All At Once 

Genres : Sci-fi, Action, Drama 

Writer : Surya Turaga 

Date : 23rd May, 2023 

So this was probably one of the weirdest movies I’ve seen in a while. It’s a very trippy, fun, interesting, and mostly, unique experience of a film. I’ve never seen anything quite like this, and loved the premise of the film. 

EEAAO is about Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), an ordinary person living a boring and unsatisfactory life. She becomes a part of fighting a villain who seeks to destroy everything. She can harness memories and skills from other versions of herself. The movie is about her looking into herself and parts of her life as she takes part in this adventure. 

The film has a lot of entertaining action and fight sequences, and the plot progresses very well. The action isn’t meaningless, and is brought very well into the story. It had a few more cutscenes than I would have liked, but that’s alright. The movie isn’t made for the fights anyways. 

The plot unfolded neatly too. The film didn’t shove a ton of complex sci-fi rules to the viewer. Instead, it had viewers figuring things out alongside the protagonist. This isn’t new to the genre, it’s just hard to bring such an arc out convincingly. 

The characters had detail, and the film tried to reveal the details slowly. But I think some nuances could be caught a bit early on. Regardless, character development was interesting to watch. I liked the portrayal of Evelyn as a weary person who starts seeing how messy her life is as she takes part in the adventure. 

The most eye popping aspects of the movie are the costumes and the visual creativity. Seriously, I have no clue how they managed to fill the plot with so many small and complex details. Some things were interesting to look at and some were humorous cultural references. Even though the creators didn’t have to add all those details, they did. 

However, there were just too many details in the film. The aim was to portray the plot and visuals of the film as being just as messy as Evelyn’s life. But it definitely got too messy at times. The action and humor dominated the film with fanny pack fight scenes, but the sheer volume of it shadowed the emotions and the film’s final message about having a chaotic life. 

The main issue is, each aspect of the movie feels like it could create a whole movie of a certain genre. The villain could make for a crazy Sam Raimi style horror sci-fi. The humor and action could rival superhero films. And so on. I like that it was this messy. But I was a little disappointed because they were unable to bring it all together in the end. 

Overall, it’s a real roller coaster of a film that’s got interesting content and appeasing visuals. It’s great for anyone who enjoys some plain action sci-fi, and is looking for something very new. It’s got issues, but it’s a very well rounded movie in spite of that. 

Surya-o-meter : 83%