movie review everything everywhere

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, everything everywhere all at once.

Now streaming on:

Few things in life are certain besides death, taxes, and maybe the never-ending task that is doing laundry. At least that’s where the characters in writer/directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert , collectively known as Daniels, new film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” find themselves initially. That is, until they take an emotional, philosophical, and deeply weird trip through the looking glass into the multiverse and discover metaphysical wisdom along the way.

In this love letter to genre cinema, Michelle Yeoh gives a virtuoso performance as Evelyn Wang, a weary owner of a laundromat under IRS audit. We first meet her enjoying a happy moment with her husband Waymond ( Ke Huy Quan ) and their daughter Joy ( Stephanie Hsu ). We see their smiling faces reflected in a mirror on their living room wall. As the camera literally zooms through the mirror, Evelyn’s smile fades, now seated at a table awash with business receipts. She’s preparing for a meeting with an auditor while simultaneously trying to cook food for a Chinese New Year party that will live up to the high standards of her visiting father Gong Gong ( James Hong , wiley as ever).

On top of juggling her father’s visit and the tax audit, Evelyn’s sullen daughter Joy wants to bring her girlfriend Becky ( Tallie Medel ) to the party and her husband wants to talk about the state of their marriage. Just as Evelyn begins to feel overwhelmed by everything happening in her life she’s visited by another version of Waymond from what he calls the Alpha verse. Here humans have learned to “verse jump” and are threatened by an omniverse agent of chaos known as Jobu Tupaki. Soon, Evelyn is thrust into a universe-hopping adventure that has her questioning everything she thought she knew about her life, her failures, and her love for her family.

Most of the action is set in an IRS office building in Simi Valley (which, as a Californian, had me in stitches), where Evelyn must battle IRS agent Diedre ( Jamie Lee Curtis , having the time of her life), a troop of security guards, and possibly everyone else she’s ever met. Production designer Jason Kisvarday crafts a seemingly endless cubicle-filled office where everything from the blade of a paper trimmer to a butt plug shaped auditor of the year awards become fair game in a battle to save the universe.

Editor Paul Rogers' breakneck pace matches the script’s frenetic dialogue, with layers of universes simultaneously folding into each other while also propelling Evelyn’s internal journey. Match cuts seamlessly connect the universes together, while playful cuts help emphasize the humor at the heart of the film.

Born from choices both made and not made, each universe has a distinct look and feel, with winking film references ranging from “ The Matrix ” to “ The Fall ” to “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” to “In The Mood For Love” to “ Ratatouille .” Even Michelle Yeoh’s own legacy finds its way into the film with loving callbacks to her Hong Kong action film days and the wuxia classic “ Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon .” The fight sequences, choreographed by Andy and Brian Le , have a balletic beauty to them, wisely shot by cinematographer Larkin Seiple in wide shots allowing whole bodies to fill the frame.

Yeoh is the anchor of the film, given a role that showcases her wide range of talents, from her fine martial art skills to her superb comic timing to her ability to excavate endless depths of rich human emotion often just from a glance or a reaction. She is a movie star and this is a movie that knows it. Watching her shine so bright and clearly having a ball brought tears to my eyes more than once.

Just as Evelyn taps into Yeoh’s iconography, facets of Waymond can be found throughout Quan’s unique career. The comic timing from his childhood roles as Data in “ The Goonies ” and Short Round in “ Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ” echoes in Evelyn’s nebbish husband. His work as a fight coordinator shows through in Alpha’s slick action hero capable of using a fanny pack to take out a group of attackers. Even his time as an assistant director to Wong Kar Wai on “2046” can be found in the universe where he plays the debonair one who got away. Quan tackles these variations with aplomb, bringing pathos to each and serving as a gentle reminder that there's strength in kindness.

As Evelyn and Waymond’s relationship ebbs and flows in iterations through the multiverses, it’s their daughter Joy who proves to be the lynchpin. In a true breakout performance from Stephanie Hsu, Joy represents a growing generational divide. Joy carries the weight of Evelyn’s fractured relationship with her grandfather and the disappointments of an American dream unattained. Her queerness as foreign to her mother as the country was when she herself first arrived. Her aimlessness a greater disappointment because of all that Eveyln sacrificed for her to have more options in life than she did. This pressure manifests in a rebellion so great it stretches beyond the multiverses into a realm where a giant everything bagel looms like a black hole ready to suck everyone into the void.

If the void arises from the compounding of generational trauma, the Daniels posit that it can be reversed through the unconditional love passed down through those same generations, if we choose compassion and understanding over judgment and rejection. Chaos reigns and life may only ever make sense in fleeting moments, but it’s those moments we should cherish. Moments of love and camaraderie. Sometimes they happen over time. Sometimes they happen all at once.

This review was filed from the premiere at the SXSW Film Festival. The film opens on March 25th.

Marya E. Gates

Marya E. Gates is a freelance film and culture writer based in Los Angeles and Chicago. She studied Comparative Literature at U.C. Berkeley, and also has an overpriced and underused MFA in Film Production. Other bylines include Moviefone, The Playlist, Crooked Marquee, Nerdist, and Vulture.

Now playing

Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg

Brian Tallerico

The Greatest Hits

Matt zoller seitz.

It's Only Life After All

Sheila o'malley.

Peyton Robinson

The First Omen

Tomris laffly, film credits.

Everything Everywhere All at Once movie poster

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Rated R for some violence, sexual material and language.

139 minutes

Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang

Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang / Jobu Tupaki

James Hong as Gong Gong

Jonathan Ke Quan as Waymond Wang

Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdra

Anthony Molinari as Police - Confetti

Jenny Slate as Big Nose

Andy Le as Alpha Jumper - Bigger Trophy

Brian Le as Alpha Jumper - Trophy

Daniel Scheinert as District Manager

Harry Shum Jr. as Chad

Boon Pin Koh as Maternity Doctor

Daniel Scheinert

Cinematographer

Larkin Seiple
Paul Rogers

Latest blog posts

A Preview of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival

Driven By Love and Necessity: An Interview With Lily Gladstone

I’ve Never Seen Anything Like It Before: Roger Corman (1926-2024)

RogerEbert.com Announces Assistant Editor, Weekly Critic, and Social Media Manager

Supported by

Critic’s Pick

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Review: It’s Messy, and Glorious

Michelle Yeoh stars as a stressed-out laundromat owner dragged into cosmic battle and genre chaos.

Share full article

By A.O. Scott

The idea of the multiverse has been a conundrum for modern physics and a disaster for modern popular culture. I’m aware that some of you here in this universe will disagree, but more often than not a conceit that promises ingenuity and narrative abundance has delivered aggressive brand extension and the infinite recombination of cliché. Had I but world enough and time, I might work these thoughts up into a thunderous supervillain rant, but instead I’m happy to report that my research has uncovered a rare and precious exception.

That would be “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. The filmmakers — who work under the name Daniels and who are best known for the wonderfully unclassifiable “Swiss Army Man” (starring Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse) — are happy to defy the laws of probability, plausibility and coherence. This movie’s plot is as full of twists and kinks as the pot of noodles that appears in an early scene. Spoiling it would be impossible. Summarizing it would take forever — literally!

But while the hectic action sequences and flights of science-fiction mumbo-jumbo are a big part of the fun (and the marketing), they aren’t really the point. This whirligig runs on tenderness and charm. As in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” or Pixar’s “Inside Out,” the antic cleverness serves a sincere and generous heart. Yes, the movie is a metaphysical multiverse galaxy-brain head trip, but deep down — and also right on the surface — it’s a bittersweet domestic drama, a marital comedy, a story of immigrant striving and a hurt-filled ballad of mother-daughter love.

At the center of it all is Evelyn Wang, played by the great Michelle Yeoh with grace, grit and perfect comic timing. Evelyn, who left China as a young woman, runs a laundromat somewhere in America with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Her life is its own small universe of stress and frustration. Evelyn’s father (James Hong), who all but disowned her when she married Waymond, is visiting to celebrate his birthday. An I.R.S. audit looms. Waymond is filing for divorce, which he says is the only way he can get his wife’s attention. Their daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), has self-esteem issues and also a girlfriend named Becky (Tallie Medel), and Evelyn doesn’t know how to deal with Joy’s teenage angst or her sexuality.

The first stretch of “Everything Everywhere All At Once” is played in a key of almost-realism. There are hints of the cosmic chaos to come, in the form of ominous musical cues (the score is by Son Lux) and swiveling camera movements (the cinematography is by Larkin Seiple) — but the mundane chaos of Evelyn’s existence provides plenty of drama.

To put it another way, the Daniels understand that she and her circumstances are already interesting. The key to “Everything” is that the proliferating timelines and possibilities, though full of danger and silliness, don’t so much represent an alternative to reality’s drabness as an extension of its complexity.

Things start to get glitchy as Waymond and Evelyn approach their dreaded meeting with Deirdre, an I.R.S. bureaucrat played with impeccable unpleasantness by Jamie Lee Curtis. Waymond — until now a timid, nervous fellow — turns into a combat-ready space commando, wielding his fanny pack as a deadly weapon. He hurriedly explains to Evelyn that the stability of the multiverse is threatened by a power-mad fiend named Jobu Tupaki, and that Evelyn must train herself to jump between universes to do battle. The leaps are accomplished by doing something crazy and then pressing a button on an earpiece. The tax office turns into a scene of martial-arts mayhem. Eventually, Jobu Tupaki shows up, and turns out to be …

You’ll see for yourself. And I hope you do. The Daniels’ command of modern cinematic tropes is encyclopedic, and also eccentric. As Evelyn zigzags through various universes, she finds herself in a live-action rip-off of “Ratatouille” ; a smoky sendup of Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood For Love” ; a world where humans have hot dogs for fingers and play the piano with their feet; and a child’s birthday party where she is a piñata. That is a small sampling. The philosophical foundation for this zaniness is the notion that every choice Evelyn (and everyone else) has made in her life was an unwitting act of cosmogenesis. The roads not taken blossom into new universes. World without end.

The metaphysical high jinks turn out to rest on a sturdy moral foundation. The multiverse — to say nothing of her own family — may lie beyond Evelyn’s control, but she possesses free will, which means responsibility for her own actions and obligations to the people around her. As her adventures grow more elaborate, she seems at first to be one of those solitary, quasi-messianic movie heroes, “the one” who has the power to face down absolute evil.

Yeoh certainly has the necessary charisma, but “Everything Everywhere” is really about something other than the usual heroics. Nobody is alone in the multiverse, which turns out to be a place where families can work on their issues. And while you are likely be tickled and dazzled by the visual variety and whiz-bang effects, you may be surprised to find yourself moved by the performances. Quan, a child star in the 1980s (in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Goonies”), has an almost Chaplinesque ability to swerve from clownishness to pathos. Hsu strikes every note in the Gen-Z songbook with perfect poise. And don’t sleep on grandpa: Hong nearly steals the show.

Is it perfect? No movie with this kind of premise — or that title — will ever be a neat, no-loose-ends kind of deal. Maybe it goes on too long. Maybe it drags in places, or spins too frantically in others. But I like my multiverses messy, and if I say that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is too much, it’s a way of acknowledging the Daniels’ generosity.

Everything Everywhere All at Once Rated R. Fighting and swearing. Running time: 2 hours 12 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

Andy Serkis, the star of the earlier “Planet of the Apes” movies, and Owen Teague, the new lead, discuss the latest film in the franchise , “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”

The HBO series “The Sympathizer” is not just a good story, it’s a sharp piece of criticism on Vietnam war movies, our critic writes .

In “Dark Matter,” the new Apple TV+ techno-thriller, a portal to parallel realities allows people to visit new worlds and revisit their own past decisions .

The tennis movie “Challengers” comes to an abrupt stop midmatch, so we don’t know who won. Does that matter? Our critics have thoughts .

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime and Hulu to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Upcoming Movies and TV shows
Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

What's the Tomatometer®?
Login/signup

Movies in theaters

Opening this week
Top box office
Coming soon to theaters
Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

Fandango at Home
Netflix streaming
Prime Video
Most popular streaming movies
What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Link to Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
The Fall Guy Link to The Fall Guy
The Last Stop in Yuma County Link to The Last Stop in Yuma County

New TV Tonight

Interview With the Vampire: Season 2
After the Flood: Season 1
Bridgerton: Season 3
Outer Range: Season 2
The Big Cigar: Season 1
Harry Wild: Season 3
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: Season 11.1
RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars: Season 9
Spacey Unmasked: Season 1
The Killing Kind: Season 1

Everything Everywhere All at Once Reviews

This film can’t quite commit to its interdimensional-war gimmick; it’s an appendage, mostly played for laughs, to the real story, which I kept waiting to arrive -- and when it did, I wished it hadn’t.

Full Review | Apr 11, 2024

A great, fabulous, huge movie that is almost literally all heart.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2024

Everything Everywhere All at Once is beautifully chaotic, wonderfully weird, and one of the coolest movies ever made.

Full Review | Sep 27, 2023

The Daniels accomplished something wonderful for the audience.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2023

Michelle Yeoh finally gets a role this decade that pays tribute to her rare talents, and absolutely owns it...

Full Review | Sep 12, 2023

The genre mashup provides a fuller insight into the characters’ personalities than a straight independent film could depict. The multiverse is a metaphor for the different facets of peoples’ potential and makes their internal lives literal.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 16, 2023

Everything Everywhere All at Once will remind you of why you love cinema. It is fresh, creative, and will leave you laughing and shedding some tears.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 27, 2023

An omnipotent being is threatening the multiverse. Who ya gonna call? Spiderman? Dr. Strange? How about a middle-aged Asian-American woman failing as a wife and mother?

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the greatest films of all time. Entertaining, hilarious, emotional, wild, unique, action packed, & INSANE

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

At the heart of it all, we ride a roller coaster of emotions that are inventive, complex, stimulating, and raw.

With such a low budget, it's almost humiliating that so many expensive Hollywood blockbusters can't even reach the heels of so much originality, imagination, excitement, and emotion.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jul 25, 2023

Everything Everywhere All At Once is a spectacle in the purest sense of the word. A sensory overload, especially in IMAX, the movie is a science fiction, multi-verse spanning love letter to family.

Delightfully disorienting and intellectually absorbing.

Full Review | May 26, 2023

Visual, sonic, and thematic noise.

Full Review | Original Score: ZERO STARS | May 11, 2023

At a few minutes short of two and a half hours, Everything Everywhere All at Once nearly wears out its welcome, but as far as hot dog-fingered audacity goes, the Daniels will make plenty of new eyeballs go googly.

Full Review | May 9, 2023

... Touches upon important themes such as control through technology, media, food, and body while resorting to an anarchic and hilarious sense of humor. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Mar 28, 2023

The filmmakers try to load the entire weight of life, the universe, and everything onto their movie. This is too many things on a bagel.

Full Review | Mar 24, 2023

Michelle Yeoh proves that being a middle aged immigrant has no boundaries and she is backed up with the amazingly gifted talents of Ke Huy Quan, Jaime Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu ! The Daniels provide a supreme sci-fi smorgasbord for the ages.

Full Review | Mar 22, 2023

It holds within it a great idea, when one disentangles it from the hairball that is the EEAAO narrative. But [...] in all its originality, it telegraphs its message, instead of allowing this intricately constructed ingenious world to be the message.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 19, 2023

The humor, though, is silly and second-rate. The googly eyes, the talking raccoon, the pet rocks at sunset, the parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey—all those work against the cast instead of with it.

Full Review | Mar 16, 2023

Skip to main content
Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Movie Reviews

Review: 'everything everywhere all at once' is as encouraging as it is on-point.

Bob Mondello

A Chinese-American businesswoman travels the multiverse in the comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once by the filmmaking duo Daniels, made up of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

What Is Cinema?
Newsletters

Ambitious, Outrageous Everything Everywhere All at Once Is All That and More

By Maureen Ryan

Image may contain Human Person Michelle Yeoh Skin Dance Pose Leisure Activities Clothing Apparel Sleeve and Finger

To say that Everything Everywhere All at Once takes big swings is a profound understatement. This movie’s swings proliferate wildly and take their own swings, which then give birth to thousands more swings, all of which drop acid together and explode in a display of fireworks (which may or may not involve butt plugs).

In the race to make the most meta piece of entertainment of all time, the competition is fierce. (Before the screening of Everything Everywhere I attended, there was a preview of the upcoming movie in which Nicolas Cage plays Nicolas Cage). But thanks to an extraordinary cast and an emotional undertow that proves irresistible, Everything Everywhere ends up being — if you can ride all those big swings — satisfyingly bonkers. Or bonkersly satisfying. I am not sure the latter phrase is grammatically correct, but this movie may have broken my brain.

I have no complaints on that score, because the incandescent Michelle Yeoh , making the most of the roles of a lifetime, did much of the breaking. That choice of the word “roles,” by the way, was not an error: Yeoh plays an astonishing array of versions of one woman, and these filmmakers understood she was the only woman on Earth that could have made this batshit ride actually work.

Although, confession time: Did I love the scenes of her with hotdogs where her fingers should be as much as directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinart clearly did? I did not. But Everything Everywhere is that kind of movie. It’s a lot on top of a lot, and then more is piled on top of that concatenation of concepts. You’re unlikely to vibe with every element of it, but never mind: because before you know it, it’s sprinting on to the next thing. Anyway, the kindest thing to do at this point would be to pause and let you have a moment to process the concept of “hotdog fingers.” If it’s any consolation, they end up being one of the least weird elements of the film. I really want to tell you about the desolate cliff where a [blank] talks to a [blank] – a truly lovely moment in which the film slows down to let you catch your breath – or the scene in which a vengeful woman beats a man with [blanks], but I also don’t want to spoil too much of its exuberant loopiness.

Everything Everywhere is certainly a very 2022 movie, in that its characters are often overwhelmed, confused and rarely sure that linear time exists anymore (and if it does… ehnnnnh ? Does it matter?). That’s not to say that the main character, Evelyn (Yeoh), allows herself the luxury of feeling exhausted. There is too much to do in her personal life and in the struggling laundry she runs with her earnest husband, Waymond ( Ke Huy Quan ). The first half of the film spends a lot of time laying out the strange things that happen to Evelyn and her family, and the rules (“rules”??) of how it all works. Suffice to say that she is, in spite of the humdrum nature of her existence, a crucial Chosen One destined to fight a titanic battle. Out of a vast multiverse of Evelyns — a film star, a chef, a martial arts expert and so on — the overworked Evelyn, the one just trying to plan a party for her dad ( James Hong ), is the One who must defeat an equally powerful foe. Due to the laundry’s tax issues, a good deal of that battle takes place inside a truly cursed IRS office.

A lesser actor would have used this expansive Into the Spiderverse meets Inception meets Airplane! premise to go broad and abandon subtlety. But the directors and Yeoh understand that the audience won’t buy into any of it unless Evelyn — all the Evelyns — are real, textured, intelligent people. The main Evelyn is not always likable and not always able to truly see her husband and her daughter Joy ( Stephanie Hsu ). This is largely because she’s allowed herself to be swallowed up by her responsibilities, which distract her, at least some of the time, from her lack of self-confidence and hope. (And that may be the most impressive trick of Everything Everywhere — that Yeoh could believably play a woman in her flop era).

Nikki Glaser Would Be Disappointed in Herself Too, If She Weren’t So Damn Funny

By Chris Murphy

Kevin Spacey’s Deep History of Alleged Sexual Assault Is Exposed in New Documentary

By Savannah Walsh

Eurovision 2024 Concludes With Controversial Grand Finale

By Eve Batey

One might wish for some streamlining here or there; some exposition is ungainly, and there are uneven moments that emanate the shaggy, indulgent bravado of ambitious film students fresh off a powerful bong hit. But arriving at some kind of acceptance — making peace with things that can be flawed, overstuffed, yet delicious — is a theme that percolates through Everything Everywhere .

A lot of sad movies underscore the fact that our existences can be mind-meltingly hard, and reality can feel, at times, like a tornado of confusion — one that makes it hard to figure out how to find moments of meaning, grace, truth or love. This movie uses absurdity to explore those ideas, but when it’s on its A-game — and with this cast, it often is — it’s anything but grim. How could it be, when it’s paying homage to classic Hong Kong action cinema and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at the same time?

Yeoh imbues Evelyn with moving shades of melancholy, regret, resolve and growing curiosity. She’s the kind of woman the world (and Hollywood) routinely overlooks, but Yeoh makes her embrace of lead-character energy positively gripping. Quan, a former child star, plays multiple iterations of his own character as well, and he is stunningly effective as quite different versions of Wayland (all of whom possess a similar spark of steadfast integrity). In every reality, he holds his own with Yeoh; if he doesn’t get a ton more work after this, Hollywood has failed us all.

There are deliriously bizarre martial arts battles and hotdog fingers; one page of my notes just says “good raccoon stuff.” Everything Everywhere All at Once is not for everyone, but within ten minutes, you’ll know if it’s for you. I will admit to a weakness for projects that, when you describe them, you sound like you’ve taken leave of your senses — but only if that wild abandon and imaginative momentum is tied to something deeper and richer. Everything Everywhere’s final-act swerve into emotionally charged territory works like gangbusters, thanks to vulnerable, deeply impressive work by Quan, Yeoh and Hsu. (Hong steals almost every scene he’s in, but of course, that’s par for the course for him.)

I can’t sum up this movie — and that’s a feature, not a bug. But I can say that Everything Everywhere is at least partly about not letting the forces of cynicism, isolation and hopelessness win. At the core of this wildly ambitious thrill ride, there are quite accessible ideas about connection, change and love. Those may be cornball (hotdog?) sentiments. But it is not for this lowly mortal to tell Michelle Yeoh she’s wrong.

— Even Before Will Smith, It Was a Strange and Awkward Oscars — “A Deeply Shocking, Traumatic Event”: The Academy Forcefully Decries Will Smith — Inside the Vanity Fair Oscar Party — Marilyn Monroe’s Final Hours: Nuke Fears, Mob Spies, and a Secret Kennedy Visitor — WeWork’s Adam and Rebekah Neumann: 9 Crazy Real-Life Stories — Colin Firth and Toni Collette on the New True-Crime Series The Staircase — Where Did All the Sex Go in Bridgerton Season Two? — What TV’s Increase in Full-Frontal Male Nudity Really Means — 15 Oscar-Winning Movies You Can Stream Right Now — From the Archive: Sandra Bullock, Full of Surprises — Sign up for the “HWD Daily” newsletter for must-read industry and awards coverage—plus a special weekly edition of “Awards Insider.”

Maureen Ryan

The 25 Best Movies on Netflix to Stream Right Now

By Joe Reid

Jon M. Chu Is Turning Crazy Rich Asians Into a Broadway Musical

By Paul Chi

Sandra Oh’s New Hollywood: “There’s a Responsibility to Be Discerning”

By David Canfield

Inside The Sympathizer’s Scathingly Funny Takedown of Vietnam War Movies

By Donald Liebenson

By Hillary Busis

By Keziah Weir

Chris Hemsworth on Fear, Love, Furiosa&-And Naming a Son After a Brad Pitt Character

By Karen Valby

Search Please fill out this field.
Newsletters
Sweepstakes
Movie Reviews

Everything Everywhere All at Once review: Michelle Yeoh surfs the multiverse

The veteran action star is the best thing in directing duo the Daniels' heady, hectic sci-fi thriller.

A movie that's title, helpfully, is also pretty much its logline, Everything Everywhere All At Once (in theaters March 25) nearly explodes with its own ideas — a chaotic full-tilt multiverse of hot dog hands and flying Pomeranians rooted (just barely) in a super human performance by Michelle Yeoh .

Everything begins, without a sliver of exposition or even a pause for breath, in a shabby laundromat in suburban Southern California that Yeoh's anxious Evelyn Wang runs with her mild-mannered husband Waymond ( Ke Huy Quan ). The day ahead looks hectic, at best: Her father ( James Hong ) is due to fly in for a New Year celebration, her grown daughter Eleanor ( The Path 's Stephanie Hsu ) wants to officially introduce her girlfriend at the party, and there's a meeting with the IRS somewhere in between that will likely determine the fate of the family's faltering business.

That's Jamie Lee Curtis 's cue to enter as the scowling, square-haired Dierdre Beaubeirdra, the living embodiment of petty bureaucracy. But something odd happens at their appointment: Waymond drags Evelyn into a broom closet, clamps a Bluetooth headset on his wife's ear, and sends her hurtling into another dimension. Whatever can be gleaned from his scant, hurried explanation, it's apparently her job to fight her way out of the building or die trying. (There's also an unsigned divorce petition hanging between them, which vaguely complicates things.)

To take on Dierdre and save the world, or at least this particular world, Evelyn will have to access the infinite other dimensions in which she is a chef, a movie star, a martial arts expert, and bring those skills back to the bland cubicles and hallways of the IRS. She's not alone, though; her loved ones also have their own alternate selves — versions that can turn a fanny pack into a deadly weapon, speak English fluently, or manifest as (why not?) a sentient rock. And to win this ill-defined battle they'll need to transcend their various estrangements, if they can find a way back to one another.

Directing duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert ( Swiss Army Man ), collectively known as the Daniels, are clearly dedicated students of cinema: Certain scenes recall the metaphysical razzle-dazzle of the Wachowskis , others the lo-fi quirk of Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze ; one lovely scene in a Hong Kong alleyway seems like a direct tribute to Wong Kar Wai . Their ambition is palpable and their imagination seemingly unfettered; the script (which the pair also cowrote) crackles and spins and throws off sparks like a Catherine wheel, even as it rarely endeavors to make basic sense.

The risk of all that high-flying pandemonium, of course, is that when anything is possible, nothing really matters. It's a fleeting, vicarious thrill to skim through worlds where everyone has wieners for fingers or raccoons make their own soup; time in the Daniels' Madlibs multiverse isn't a flat circle, it's an everything bagel (literally), and the metaphor is apt. It's also frequently maddening, and the actors, particularly the inexhaustible Yeoh, do much of the work to ground what often feels, with its dream logic and layer-cake Inception feints, like a coded story whose secret key you haven't been invited to share. But there are no small bites of the bagel; it's all at once, or not at all. Grade: B–

‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ Review: Michelle Yeoh’s Insane Multiverse Comedy Lives Up to Its Name

Daniels return with one of the most ambitious and bonkers films in recent memory.

In Swiss Army Man , the debut film from Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (collectively and fitting known as Daniels), Hank ( Paul Dano ) and his corpse friend Manny ( Daniel Radcliffe ) shoot out of a river propelled on the power of Manny’s farts. As they fly through the air, they sing a song to each other that goes: “You just have to remember that we’re all here for a purpose, and the Universe picks its time. Everything, everywhere matters to everything.” While Swiss Army Man only lightly touched on this idea, six years later, Daniels’ second film Everything Everywhere All At Once almost makes this verse a mantra amongst a cavalcade of insane multiverses, unlimited possibilities, and endless creativity. Daniels has given audiences a wholly unique vision that literally feels like everything everywhere all at once.

Leading this trip is Evelyn Wang ( Michelle Yeoh at maybe her all-time best), who runs a struggling laundromat with her overly-optimistic husband Waymond (an equally fantastic Ke Huy Quan ). When we first meet Evelyn, she’s surrounded by receipts, thanks to the laundromat getting audited, her husband is putting googly-eyes on bags of laundry, and it doesn’t take long for Evelyn to embarrass her daughter, Joy ( Stephanie Hsu ) when introducing her girlfriend to Evelyn’s father, Gong Gong ( James Hong ). To make matters worse, Evelyn doesn’t know Waymond has divorce papers, and IRS inspector Diedre (a hilariously wild Jamie Lee Curtis ) accuses the laundromat of fraud. As someone tells Evelyn later in the film, Evelyn is living her worst you.

But that’s not to say Evelyn hasn’t tried to escape her monotonous life. We learn she’s wanted to be a singing coach and an author, amongst other interests that became hobbies instead of life-altering careers. But Evelyn’s life irrevocably changes when a version of Waymond tells Evelyn that she is just one of many Evelyns, yet she’s the only one that can defeat a powerful villain named Jobu Tupaki, who could destroy all the universes (and there are a lot of universes).

RELATED: 'Everything Everywhere All At Once', 'I Love My Dad' Among Winners at SXSW Festival

Daniels turns Everything Everywhere All At Once a frenetic and truly ridiculous barrage of probabilities and multiverse jumping. Anything you can imagine, Daniels has also thought of and thrown into this film. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a bombardment of hot dog fingers, googly-eyes, Wong Kar-Wai homages, fanny packs incredibly strong pinkie fingers, talking rocks, the Nine Days song “Absolutely (Story of a Girl),” raccoons, the guy who played Santa Claus in I Think You Should Leave , and butt plugs. And like Swiss Army Man says: everything everywhere matters to everything.

Part of the brilliance of Everything Everywhere All At Once is the remarkable amount of ideas Daniels can cram into this story without it becoming an absurd mess. However crazy you’re thinking a story can get—triple it. There are no restraints, no stops, no idea too wild that doesn’t make it into Everything Everywhere . And while at times, the film can almost feel suffocatingly overwhelming, it’s all part of the bigger plan, an everything bagel of probabilities.

Amongst this film that flies by so fast, it should have an epilepsy warning, is an extremely touching story about the paths we take in our lives, the paths that we didn’t take, and how they lead us to exactly where we need to be. Again, this is coming from the two directors that made a guy’s friendship with a dead body a truly moving story. Daniels can make anything (and everything) happen.

Key to this narrative are the performances by Yeoh, Quan, and Hsu. With so many versions of these characters running around this multiverse of madness, these three are able to meet any challenge that the Daniels throw at them—whether a star-crossed lover-type story, a Pixar parody, or some of the most entertaining fight scenes in recent memory. As the grounding force of Everything Everywhere , Yeoh is simply incredible, as no matter what incarnation of Evelyn we see her in, Yeoh always brings that original Evelyn’s aspirations, attitude, and fears with her. Also tremendous is Quan, the gigantic beating heart of the film, who gives an earnest, hilarious, and emotional performance, and Hsu, who has to be both extremely vulnerable and one of the biggest threats to the universe at the same time—not an easy task.

With Everything Everywhere All At Once , Daniels is touching on many of the same concepts they tried to tackle with Swiss Army Man , just in a more bonkers way with a larger scope. Everything Everywhere has to be as nutso as it is to prove its point: when everything is possible, what truly matters? While the third act can occasionally seem weight down by Daniels’ script attempting to hit all the grander points they’re trying to make, it all comes together in the end if you’re willing to take the ride. On the way, Daniels explores the hopelessness of depression, the little miracles that truly make life worthwhile, how acts of kindness can be an extraordinary asset, and—most fitting to this film—how it’s OK to be a mess.

If Daniels had said they had spent the six years since Swiss Army Man filming Everything Everywhere All At Once and putting together this awe-inspiring world, it would make perfect sense. It’s rare that a film crams as much into it as this one does, yet without feeling overstuffed or ridiculous for the sake of being audacious. There’s a real determination and intention to every chaotic choice, a method to this madness that ultimately makes Everything Everywhere All At Once one of the most ambitious and ballsy films in recent years—maybe even ever. Daniels try to cram everything everywhere all at once into Everything Everywhere All At Once , and I’ll be damned, they accomplished that goal with brilliance and style.

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Review: ‘The Matrix’ Meets the Multiverse in Daniels’ Instant Classic

David ehrlich.

Share on Facebook
Share to Flipboard
Share on LinkedIn
Show more sharing options
Submit to Reddit
Post to Tumblr
Print This Page
Share on WhatsApp

Multiverses are so hot right now. And why shouldn’t they be? At a time when people can’t even look at their phones without being confronted by a seemingly infinite number of competing realities — a time which everything seems close enough to touch, but almost nothing feels possible to change, and even the happiest people you know are haunted by the endless possibilities of who else they might have been — telling a story that only takes place on a single plane of existence might as well be an act of denial.

That isn’t a problem for the filmmaking duo of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (better known as Daniels ), who once created an interactive six-minute short that could be played in 3,618,502,788,666,131,106,986,593,281,521,497,120,414,687,020,801,267,626, 233,049,500,247,285,301,248 different ways . These guys aren’t just uniquely prepared to meet the present moment, they’ve been waiting for it to catch up with them for a long time. So it’s not much of a surprise that the project they’ve been working on since 2016’s “ Swiss Army Man ” sees the crisis of living with “ Everything Everywhere All at Once ” more clearly than any other movie like it.

Not that there are any other movies like it. Here is an orgiastic work of slaphappy genius that doesn’t operate like a narrative film so much as a particle accelerator — or maybe a cosmic washing machine — that two psychotic 12-year-olds designed in the hopes of reconciling the anxiety of what our lives could be with the beauty of what they are. It’s a machine powered by the greatest performance that Michelle Yeoh has ever given, pumped full of the zaniest martial arts battles that Stephen Chow has never shot, and soaked through with the kind of “anything goes” spirit that’s only supposed to be on TV these days.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is as overstuffed as its title implies, even more juvenile than its pedigree suggests, and so creatively unbound from the minute it starts that it makes Daniels’ previous efforts seem like they were made with Bressonian restraint by comparison (for context, their last feature was a sweet fable starring Harry Potter as an explosively farting corpse). It’s a movie that I saw twice just to make sure I hadn’t completely hallucinated it the first time around, and one that I will soon be seeing a third time for the same reason. I don’t ever expect to understand how it was (or got) made, but I already know that it works. And I know that it works because my impulse to pick on its imperfections and wonder how it might’ve been different eventually forfeits to the utter miracle of its existence.

It’s a movie… about a flustered Chinese-American woman trying to finish her taxes. Evelyn Wang (Yeoh) is being audited — first by the IRS, and then by the other great evils of our multiverse. She and her stubbornly guileless husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan, a sublime revelation in one of his first major roles since the days of Short Round) immigrated to California in pursuit of happiness after Evelyn’s overbearing father, Gong Gong (James Hong, 93 years old and yet still in his prime) forbid the marriage, but their dreams of a brighter future were soon quashed by the realities of running a small business and raising a child of their own.

The spectrum of women who Evelyn imagined she might become grew smaller every day, the possibilities burning away like joss paper until the proprietress of a failing laundromat was the only person left in the ashes. Now Evelyn’s life consists of wincing her way through racist micro-aggressions at work and beyond, peeling off the googly eyes that Waymond sticks everywhere to make objects seem happier, and acting as narrow-minded towards her lesbian daughter Joy (an inter-dimensionally great Stephanie Hsu in what should be a star-making performance) as her own father was towards her. Every parent wants what’s best for their children, but even the ones who should know better can delude themselves into thinking they know what that is. The more faith you have in someone’s potential, the harder it can be to recognize how they’re achieving it.

Maybe it would help if Evelyn could see history repeating itself — if she could remember the look that fell across her dad’s face when the doctor told him: “I’m sorry, it’s a girl.” Luckily for Evelyn, the entire space-time continuum will avail itself to her by the end of the Chinese New Year party she’s throwing as part of Gong Gong’s latest visit. And she might not even have to wait that long, as an emergency meeting with demonic IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdra is interrupted by an even more urgent plea for Evelyn to save the entire multiverse from annihilation.

The hows and whys of what happens next are best left for audiences to discover first-hand, but it might help to imagine if “The Matrix” had been directed by people who grew up watching “The Matrix” — more specifically, by people who grew up watching “The Matrix,” spent their twenties pushing the visual boundaries of viral videos in much the same way as the Wachowskis broke new ground for Hollywood blockbusters, and then spent all of the cache they’d accrued on a disorientingly sweet movie about a corpse that farts so hard it can function as a jet ski. That’s what we’re dealing with here.

Evelyn soon finds herself pin-balling between “alternate life paths” in much the same way as Neo was slingshotted between the real world and a simulation. Or are they pin-balling into her? A version of Waymond acts as her Morpheus (few characters have ever been saddled with this much exposition, and even fewer have done as much with it), while bystanders like Deirdre are conscripted into a war between a parallel universe and a dimension-hopping demigod. A crucial difference soon emerges: Evelyn isn’t the One, she’s the Zero. In an infinite sea of possible Evelyns, she is the ultimate sum of unrealized potential and missed opportunities. No other version of herself has settled for less, or found so little joy in the people she loves — her daughter most of all.

Evelyn is an empty vessel, and that makes it uniquely easy for her to contain other iterations of herself. One of them is a Peking opera singer. One of them is a piñata. One of them became a Hong Kong action star after denying Waymond’s marriage proposal, and now yearns for the man who got away in a rainswept alley that’s soaked with “In the Mood for Love” ambiance and shot with flashes of Wong Kar-Wai’s signature step-printing technique (Yeoh channels Maggie Cheung, and Quan makes for a dashing Tony Leung stand-in).

This flourish, fleshed out with footage from Yeoh’s “Crazy Rich Asians” press tour, is par for the course in a movie that invites its most famous cast members to span the entire spectrum of their screen personas, as “Everything Everywhere All at Once” refracts them through the afterimage of their careers with a prismatic dynamism that mirrors the multiverse itself (“Millennium Actress” fans will find this to be one of several different elements that lend Daniels’ film the elastic essence of a live-action anime). Deirdre is a literally multi-dimensional role played by Jamie Lee Curtis — not someone I would’ve expected to star in one of the great fight scenes of the 21st century, but our universe is weird like that. Her character is often tough, sometimes tender, and always greater than the sum of her parts because of how fearlessly Curtis layers them on top of each other.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, Jamie Lee Curtis, 2022. © A24 / Courtesy Everett Collection

Of course, it’s Yeoh’s monumental performance that holds the multiverse together, as she skips from slapstick cluelessness to staggering omniscience as fluidly as Evelyn moves between worlds. One moment she’s trying to focus on her taxes, the next she’s looking for love in a universe where a quirk of evolution has, um, changed the laws of intimacy in a very ridiculous way. (As you might recall from the farting corpse movie, Daniels tend to use playground humor as a Trojan horse to more directly interrogate the nature of our existence than polite cinema might allow, and the fight sequence in which Evelyn squares off against two guys who have large trophies jammed up their butts — masterfully choreographed by stunt coordinator Timothy Eulich — is just the tip of the iceberg here.)

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” allows Yeoh to revisit the best kind of roles she’s ever had, shine in the kind of roles she was never given, and dive head-first into the kind of roles that have always seemed beneath her; first one after the other, and then later all at the same time. It’s no surprise that the star of “Supercop 2” still excels at balletic martial arts choreography (watching Quan decimate some rent-a-cops with a fanny pack is another story), just as it’s no secret that the beating heart of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” can play a withering mom so well that even people in the audience might feel like they’re letting her down.

But Yeoh’s performance as the ultimate everywoman is uniquely astonishing because of how well she braids her many talents together. Evelyn is splintered by self-denial to the degree that even her subtitles fracture apart at one point, and yet the actress playing her is so locked-in to the character’s belief that her life is “wrong” that you can feel Evelyn start to reclaim her perspective when things go truly haywire. The entire second chapter of this three-part movie unfolds like an exponentially more complex version of the memory chase from “Being John Malkovich,” and yet Yeoh never allows us to get lost as she careens across the multiverse — through everything, toward nothing, and possibly back towards a new understanding of “how things are supposed to be.”

Speaking of not realizing how good we had it, it’s telling that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” deliberately evokes so many different movies from 1999 (Daniels also tap into the manic thrum of “Magnolia” in order to depict the entropy of Evelyn’s daily life, and exhume the swaggering nihilism of “Fight Club” for the villain’s self-destructive mayhem). The closest sibling to this film in terms of its anything goes, everything goes hard, DIY doomsday cult aesthetic is probably the Sion Sono freak-outs that came a few years later — Joy’s costumes are worth the price of admission unto themselves, especially the Björk-inspired white bagel dress she wears to the end of the world — but there’s no mistaking that Daniels embody a there are no rules! approach that used to be commonplace in mainstream American cinema and now feels as alien to us as the members of Evelyn’s family do to each other. It’s wild that such a visionary take on the multiverse is getting a wide release while “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is still in theaters; it would be like a top 40 radio station playing “Kid A” and Kid Rock back-to-back one night in the early 2000s just because they both technically qualified as popular music.

The filmmaking here is so bold and without boundaries that it sometimes feels out of place in such a warm hug of a movie. That push-and-pull is endemic to the nature of Daniels’ work, and the more virtuosically multi-dimensional “Everything Everywhere All at Once” becomes, the more unambiguously its vision calcifies into a small handful of comforting truths. Any film that spans from the dawn of life on Earth to the potential death of the universe itself is going to operate in broad terms, and yet Evelyn and her family are such lovably specific people that it can be frustrating when they start talking to each other in platitudes, no matter how beautiful those platitudes often are.

This is a movie animated by the friction it creates from rubbing the entire concept of human existence against one woman’s struggle to focus on some paperwork — among so many other things, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” has to be the truest depiction of ADHD I’ve ever seen — and Daniels can only hope to sustain that tension by constantly escalating the tug-of-war between the epicness of their premise and the intimacy of their characters. They have to double down on every joke and triple-underline every breakthrough just so that Evelyn’s epiphany that “we’re all small and stupid” might actually feel like the biggest thing in the world.

It does. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is about finding something to hold onto in the midst of oblivion, and it isn’t afraid to make itself the ultimate example of how that might work. Guided by an omnipresent Son Lux score that always manages to find a measure of harmony amid the chaos, Daniels spin the tedium of laundry and taxes into an apocalyptic war against the spirit of nihilism itself. And just when it seems like their runaway imaginations are about to lead this film up its own butthole and straight into the void beyond, something reaches out to hold it down and pull it back from the abyss (an image that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” makes literal in heart-burstingly poignant fashion).

In creating a multiverse so wide that even the greatest of miracles are reduced to mere statistical inevitabilities, Daniels have made something truly special: A movie that celebrates the infinite possibilities of its medium by finding a measure of I wouldn’t trade it for the world beauty in every permutation. A movie that reconciles the smallness of our lives with the infinity of their potential. A movie that will forever change the way you think about bluetooth, butt plugs, and Brad Bird — about everything bagels and everything else. This may not be the only universe there is, but it’s the only one we’ve got. But if we’re able to see it clearly, there’s an outside chance it might just be the only one we need.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” premiered at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. A24 will release it in theaters on Friday, March 25.

Most Popular

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Review: Chaos Reigns – and So Does Michelle Yeoh – in Unhinged Multiverse Movie

Hyperactive directing duo “the Daniels” swing for the fences with this exhausting existential comedy, wherein a Chinese woman stares infinity in the kisser.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

‘The Three Musketeers – Part II: Milady’ Review: Eva Green Surprises in French Blockbuster’s Less-Than-Faithful Finale 4 weeks ago
‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ Review: Henry Cavill Leads a Pack of Inglorious Rogues in Guy Ritchie’s Spirited WWII Coup 4 weeks ago
‘Challengers’ Review: Zendaya and Company Smash the Sports-Movie Mold in Luca Guadagnino’s Tennis Scorcher 1 month ago

Way back in 1998, before Marvel made multiverses a household concept, Gwyneth Paltrow starred in a lovely parallel-realities drama called “Sliding Doors,” in which a woman’s life split along two paths, depending on whether or not her character caught a specific train. At the time, juggling these competing fates was considered to be so demanding that the filmmakers obliged one of the two Gwyneths to get a haircut, so audiences could tell them apart.

Produced by comrades in maximalism the Russo brothers, the result is a mess, but a meticulously planned and executed mess, where every shot, every sound effect and every sight gag fits exactly as the Daniels intended into this dense and cacophonous eyesore, which endeavors to capture the staggering burden of trying to exist in a world of boundless choice (an idea Jaco Van Dormael’s “Mr. Nobody” did with comparable complexity). It’s a hyperactive solution for today’s attention-deficit audiences, who’ve been bombarded by bad news — of pandemics and protests and imminent world wars — and whose real concerns boil down to the basics, like getting along with their parents or scrounging the money to pay the rent.

Scheinert and Kwan are style-over-substance directors who desperately want their films to be as profound as they are formally inventive. Their 2016 feature debut, “Swiss Army Man,” was the same way: a pageant of gonzo Michel Gondry-like invention that quieted down in the final stretch to make a sincere statement against suicide. This one looks at the intense parent-child bond in one Asian family — especially the impossible demands that the immigrant mom puts on her daughter — and argues that letting go while loving unconditionally is the answer.

There are enough ideas in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” to fuel a dozen movies, or else a full-blown TV series, but the Daniels have shoehorned it all into a bombastic, emotionally draining 139 minutes. Moviegoers with limber imaginations may well appreciate the lunatic ambition and nutso execution of this high-concept hurricane, which ricochets like a live-action cartoon for most of that duration. But less versatile viewers will emerge frazzled, like Wile E. Coyote after swallowing a stick of dynamite: their heads charred, blinking blankly as smoke wafts from their ears.

As much as narrative innovation typically excites me, I confess to falling in the latter category this time around, unable to grasp the movie’s overcomplicated sci-fi logic, which takes the red-pill mind-screw of “The Matrix” and multiplies it by infinity. It’s “The OA” on acid. Yeoh plays immigrant matriarch Evelyn Wang, who operates a laundromat with husband Raymond (Ke Huy Quan, who played Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies,” now all grown up) that’s being audited by the IRS. As if her tax woes weren’t enough, she’s saddled with personal issues too: Nothing she does is good enough for her father, Gong Gong (James Hong), which in turn informs the way Evelyn treats her exasperated adult daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu).

Raymond has drawn up divorce papers, but instead of serving them, he’s overcome by a quivering sensation on the way to the tax office, whereby a version of Raymond from a parallel universe occupies his body. This more agile proxy performs an impromptu mental scan of Evelyn, instructing her how to access her alternate lives, unlocking all kinds of kooky Charlie Kaufman-esque possibilities. Evelyn doesn’t know what to think, but follows Not-Raymond’s directions, which allow her to “verse-jump.”

Things only get more intimidating from there, as the quantum-leaping Raymond explains the rules that an alternate Evelyn discovered. Apparently, she’s some sort of big-brain physicist in another dimension, whereas she learns “you’re living your worst you” in this one — meaning that every other possible Evelyn made more successful life choices. One became a huge Hong Kong action star (that Evelyn is closest to real-life Yeoh), others an opera singer, a maid or a teppanyaki-style chef. The Daniels present as many of these realities as possible in short, zany micro-sketches. There’s even a universe in which everyone has hot dogs for fingers, and rather than cutting to that scenario just once, the directors bring it back again and again as an extended joke. Same thing with a running gag about a world where people are mind-controlled by raccoons.

One can’t help wondering what, if anything, wound up on the editing room floor in this movie, which shifts into dark, apocalyptic mode relatively early, as a demented alternate version of Deirdre comes after Evelyn like a broke-down, Lane Bryant-clad Terminator. But the evil IRS auditor isn’t the true antagonist here. Nor are the vaguely Agent Smith-like security guards. The real threat is Joy, Evelyn’s daughter, on whom Mom has piled life’s many disappointments, to the point that Joy finally snapped. She has reinvented herself as an entity known as Jobu Tupaki, who jumps from universe to universe murdering Evelyns and leaving a trail of chaos in her wake.

Great storytellers make sense of chaos, whereas the Daniels gleefully embrace it, amplifying the headachy sensation with rapid editing and Son Lux’s broken-pipes score. “Everything Everywhere” recognizes that life can be overwhelming, that family dynamics are tricky and the world isn’t fair. It counters those challenges with an unexpected sense of optimism, even as a giant CG everything bagel comes bursting through a parallel dimension to swallow up all that Evelyn holds dear. As the Daniels riffle manically between the dozen or so worlds they’ve created, we hardly notice that perhaps only 10 principal characters populate them. By keeping the cast small, they make it slightly easier to distinguish between the various realities — including one that can’t sustain life, in which Evelyn and Joy appear as rocks — but still can’t resist the kind of meta humor that inspires the feint where faux credits roll at the 85-minute mark. (Would that this were the end!)

Reviewed at Sepulveda Screening Room, Los Angeles, March 9, 2022. In SXSW Film Festival (opener). MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 139 MIN.

Production: An A24 release of a Gozie Agbo presentation of a Ley Line Entertainment production. Producers: Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Mike Larocca, Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, Jonathan Wang. Executive producers: Tim Headington, Theresa Steele Page, Todd Makurath, Josh Rudnik, Michelle Yeoh. Co-producers: Allison Rose Carter, Jon Read, Sarah Halley Finn.
Crew: Directors, writers: Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert. Camera: Larkin Seiple. Editor: Paul Rogers. Music: Son Lux. Music supervisors: Lauren Marie Milkus, Bruce Gilbert
With: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tallie Medel, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., Biff Wiff. (English, Mandarin, Cantonese dialogue)

More From Our Brands

Kelly clarkson, whoopi goldberg bond over health journeys and family dynamics, billy baldwin and chynna phillips’s california home just hit the market for $3.8 million, husch blackwell’s 2024 ncaa compliance report: college athletics in transition, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, the voice semi-finals recap: which of the top 9 performed like a perfect 10, verify it's you, please log in.

Everything Everywhere All At Once Review

13 May 2022

Everything Everywhere All At Once

At the exact moment Everything Everywhere All At Once is about to kick into overdrive, Michelle Yeoh ’s Evelyn reads a vital piece of advice: “P.S. Don’t forget to breathe.” Really, it’s  a missive to the audience — a necessary heads-up to, in the words of Jurassic Park ’s Mr Arnold, hold onto your butts. Because once it starts, it rarely stops — an all-out cinematic assault, a cacophony of creativity that dazzles, delights, and defies explanation with every passing second. Leaving you breathless is its entire MO.

Anyone who saw the first film from Daniels (that’s writer-director duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert ), Swiss Army Man , would expect as much. The pair’s feature debut was the infamous ‘ Daniel Radcliffe farting corpse’ movie — a film whose seemingly crass premise belied its surprisingly reflective ruminations on life, death and companionship. It’s impressive enough that Daniels have created a follow-up that, in its most out-there moments — and there are plenty of those — is just as jaw-droppingly wild; take a drink every time Everything Everywhere All At Once delivers something you’ve never seen on screen before, and you’d black out long before the closing credits. But more miraculous is that, once again, they balance the ‘did they actually just do that ?’ moments with such spectacular emotion, enriching the soul while confounding the senses. This is a Daniels film — the intersection of the profane and the profound is their comfort zone.

It is thunderously cinematic, revelling in the simplicity of filmmaking’s most basic tools, while deploying them to their maximum potential.

So much of that emotional depth comes from the fact that, beneath the multiversal mayhem, Everything Everywhere All At Once is a family story. Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn, a Chinese-American immigrant who runs a laundromat with husband Waymond ( The Goonies and Temple Of Doom star Ke Huy Quan , back on our screens at last), is primarily a woman teetering towards existential crisis. There is specificity in her story. But there is universality in the way that she feels — overwhelmed by the relentlessness of her life, consumed by everything, everywhere, all at once. She has a business to run, taxes to file, customers to please, a father to live up to, a husband to argue with, and — most importantly — a daughter she increasingly cannot relate to. Subsequently, she’s closed off, trapped under the weight of her failed hopes and dreams, struggling to perpetuate a life she has no passion for. It’s a set-up expertly established in a claustrophobic opening reel, set in the cramped chaos of the Wang home — a taut ticking-clock of noise, motion and clashing conversations, radiating Uncut Gems -style stress.

It’s so compelling, you almost don’t want the sci-fi stuff to intrude. But when it does, it does  so spectacularly, Waymond’s ‘Alphaverse’ self opening Evelyn’s mind to alternate universes  in which she’s all the things she ever wanted to be: a singer, a chef, an action-movie star. With multiversal evil Jobu Tupaki (“an agent of pure chaos”) threatening to bring everything to an end, it’s up to Evelyn to ‘Verse-Jump’ into her other life-paths and tap into those skills to  fight back. What follows are pulse-pounding martial-arts brawls to rival The Matrix and   The Raid , gonzo expeditions into bizarro alt-dimensions (hot-dog hands, anyone?), and delightfully bonkers riffs on everything from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Ratatouille to In The Mood For Love . In its more existential second half, the film tugs deeply on those familial threads, espousing joy and connectivity as necessary forces to combat nihilism.

The magic of Everything Everywhere All At Once is in its title — within it, you’ll find every genre, experience every emotion. It’s both a reflection of, and an oasis from, the incessant overstimulation of 21st-century life. So many films would collapse in on themselves under  that kind of pressure. EEAAO never does. It is thunderously cinematic, revelling in the simplicity of filmmaking’s most basic tools, while deploying them to their maximum potential. And it is brilliantly performed — Stephanie Hsu is revelatory as the multifaceted Joy; Quan is astonishing in his cinematic comeback, an action master who’ll make your heart explode too; Jamie Lee Curtis has a blast exaggerating the monstrous physicality of a no-bullshit tax officer; and Yeoh is perfection, drawing on every skill from every role she’s ever played to bring Evelyn’s many lives to life.

This is a radical film, about radical love and radical acceptance. It’s the biggest-hearted movie you can imagine that also features someone being beaten to death with two massive, floppy dildos. You’ll goggle at the (literal) ballsiest fight scene ever committed to film. You’ll cry at a shot of two rocks. You’ll never look at a bagel the same way. Don’t forget to breathe.

Movies | 20 12 2023

TV Series | 21 04 2023

TV Series | 21 03 2023

Movies | 12 03 2023

Everything Everywhere All At Once – Oscars 2023

Movies | 13 03 2023

Movies | 19 02 2023

BAFTA nominations – Everything Everywhere, Banshees, All Quiet On The Western Front

Movies | 19 01 2023

Movies | 02 12 2022

International edition
Australia edition
Europe edition

Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Everything Everywhere All at Once review – nothing nowhere over a long period of time

Despite some smart gags, this broadly buzzed-about comedy turns out to be an oddly mediocre misfire

T his hipster hypefest is an adventure in alternative existences and multiverse realities from writer-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert – the “Daniels” – who in 2016 gave us the Jonzeian comedy Swiss Army Man . Everything Everywhere All at Once has been critically swooned over in the US and pretty much everywhere else, so it’s disconcerting to find it frantically hyperactive and self-admiring and yet strangely laborious, dull and overdetermined, never letting up for a single second to let us care about, or indeed believe in, any of its characters.

Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn, a Chinese-American woman who co-owns a scuzzy laundromat with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan); Evelyn is discontented with her life and has a tense relationship with her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), using Joy’s frail and old-fashioned grandfather Gong Gong (James Hong) – who lives with them – as an excuse not to accept Joy’s gay identity. Evelyn reaches a crisis when confronted by an angry tax officer, Deirdre Beaubeirdra ( Jamie Lee Curtis ), who is auditing their business, and furious about Evelyn’s attempts to claim deductions for a karaoke machine for the laundromat’s community party nights, at which Evelyn also offers food. In her heart, poor Evelyn figures she could have been a singer, or a chef, or a movie star in another life and this tax-deduction issue triggers a crazy journey into any number of different universes for more than two hours.

There are some nice gags and sprightly Kubrickian touches, and one genuinely shocking scene when Evelyn fat-shames her daughter – an authentically upsetting moment of family dysfunction that seems to come from another film, one in a parallel universe. But this mad succession of consequence-free events, trains of activity which get cancelled by a switch to another parallel world, means that nothing is actually at stake, and the film becomes a formless splurge of Nothing Nowhere Over a Long Period of Time. Again, this film is much admired and arrives adorned with saucer-eyed critical notices … I wish I liked it more.

Comedy films
Drama films
Jamie Lee Curtis

Comments (…)

Review: ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ is, for better or worse, exactly that

A woman stands in front of another woman and a man with her arms out, as if protecting them.

Show more sharing options
Copy Link URL Copied!

At the beginning of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the camera creeps slowly toward a circular mirror — an apt start for a movie that will soon whoosh its characters through one looking glass after another. Amid all the whooshing, though, try to hold on to the image of that circle, which isn’t the easiest thing to do amid all the sights and sounds, frenzied fight scenes and grotesque sight gags that Daniels — a.k.a. the writing-directing duo of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert ( “Swiss Army Man” ) — have crammed into their latest surreal head-spinner of a movie.

Still, they do leave a trail of metaphysical breadcrumbs, or perhaps I should say bagel crumbs. That circle will recur throughout the movie, first in the glass door of a washing machine and later as an extremely literal “everything bagel,” a giant cosmic doughnut that has been sprinkled with flecks of every piece of matter that has ever existed. Is this bagel the circle of life or perhaps the Circle of Eternal Return, a concept that pops up in the work of the German novelist Michael Ende and the Ukrainian artist Valerii Lamakh? It feels more like a black hole, destined to swallow up everything and everyone because, at the end of the day, as one character puts it, “nothing matters.”

For your safety

The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the CDC and local health officials .

Does your head hurt yet, or just your soul? Running a funny, messy, moving, grotesque, sometimes exhilarating and often exasperating 140 minutes, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” can be a pain and knows it; it might also be its own cure. Crammed with ideas, jokes, laments, non sequiturs and some terrific actors you’ve seen before (if not nearly enough), the movie comes at you like a warm hug wrapped in a kung fu chop: It’s both a sweet, sentimental story about a Chinese American family and a wild, maximalist sensory assault. In the end, its many swirling parts unite around a remarkably coherent purpose: to provide a rare and dazzling showcase for a megawatt performer who scowls, gasps, punches, kicks, leaps, flips, soars and finally transcends.

That would be Michelle Yeoh, who has long been one of Asia’s top action stars but — from early breakthroughs (“Tomorrow Never Dies,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) through prestige disappointments (“Memoirs of a Geisha,” “The Lady”) to a few high-profile supporting turns (“Crazy Rich Asians,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”) — has never enjoyed the spectacular Hollywood career she’s long deserved. (Even “Everything Everywhere,” originally conceived for Jackie Chan before Daniels decided to reconceive the lead as a woman, nearly eluded her as well.) The agony of what might have been haunts Yeoh’s stardom, and it also looms over her Evelyn Wang, a stressed-out, desperately unfulfilled woman who’s staring down the barrel of the IRS as the action gets underway.

Four people expectantly look at someone sitting in a cubicle.

A messy tax audit of her family-run laundromat isn’t the only thing weighing on Evelyn. She’s busy planning a birthday party for her overbearing dad (the great 93-year-old veteran James Hong), from whom she’s hiding the fact that her teenage daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), is a lesbian. (And has a girlfriend, played by Tallie Medel.) Evelyn also has a patient, long-suffering husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), whom she’s so used to neglecting that she hasn’t even noticed he’s filing for divorce. Then, during a visit to their cranky auditor, Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn is suddenly yanked out of her body — whoosh! — and transported into that of another Evelyn, and then another Evelyn, and then another Evelyn, all of them occupying their own distinct parallel universes.

Welcome, in other words, to the latest cinematic incarnation of the multiverse, in which an infinite number of parallel timelines suddenly converge in a maelstrom of controlled chaos. That concept, a longtime science fiction staple, has been repopularized of late in the last couple of Spider-Man features (and the forthcoming “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”), which makes it all the more welcome to see an iteration that doesn’t spring from a corporate-branded property. In this one, the multiverse has come under threat from an unstoppable evil force known as Jobu Tobacky, and Evelyn — despite or perhaps because of her utterly unremarkable existence — is the only one capable of defeating it. To do this, she will have to jump repeatedly between universes and, like a video-game paladin shifting fighting styles at will, absorb the special powers of her many, many fellow Evelyns.

These include, among others, Evelyn the Peking opera singer, Evelyn the Hong Kong movie star (cue a blink-and-you-miss-it shot of Yeoh attending the “Crazy Rich Asians” premiere), Evelyn the woman with hot dogs for fingers (don’t ask) and Evelyn the teppanyaki chef. Charmingly, a lot of these adventures seem to hark back to various late-’90s antecedents: Like Neo in “The Matrix,” Evelyn is a messiah-in-training who must learn to absorb powerful fighting techniques in the trippiest possible way. And like the indecisive heroines of “Sliding Doors” and “Run Lola Run,” though to a vastly more insane degree, she must entertain multiple possible versions of her own story — all in a movie that plays at times like a very long, very surreal “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel from which the pages have been torn out and then glued back together at random.

I will leave the actual mechanics of Evelyn’s interdimensional portal-hopping for you to discover; you’ll learn most of them from Waymond, who, through one of this multiverse’s many quirks, frequently doubles as an exposition delivery machine. Suffice it to say that the constantly evolving rules often require the characters to do gross, painful and embarrassing things, like inflict paper cuts on themselves, make photocopies of their nether-regions and use trophies as butt plugs. Kwan and Scheinert clearly haven’t abandoned the giddy anal fixations of “Swiss Army Man,” a.k.a. the movie that starred Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse. (And they say auteurism is dead.)

A woman stands in a fighting pose with papers flying in the air around her.

The directors’ signature mix of frenetic silliness and disarming sincerity unlocks something especially fresh and exciting in Yeoh. Given how often she’s been typecast as a figure of serene, Zen-like composure, it’s a tonic to see her play someone who so conspicuously doesn’t have her act together, a woman with blood on her brow, anxiety in her gaze and a voice that sometimes cracks as it rises several octaves above her usual register. (She’s an oddity, and also an auditee.) The result is as passionate and exhaustive a love letter as any filmmakers have ever written to their star, and Yeoh answers it by fusing action, comedy and drama with a grace and dexterity she’s seldom been given the chance to muster.

As it happens, Evelyn isn’t the only character popping up in multiple dimensions here, and Yeoh isn’t the only actor to turn multitasking into art. Curtis brings just the right demented comic edge to her many faces of Deirdre (most of them scowling, some of them sympathetic), while Hsu piercingly registers Joy’s sadness even amid a flurry of outlandish wardrobe changes (courtesy of costume designer Shirley Kurata). Most poignant of all is Quan, whom you’ll recognize as the ’80s child star who played Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies.” His subsequent, yearslong rejection by an industry that didn’t know what to do with him is subtly referenced — and even rectified — in his performance as a husband and father with his own easily underestimated reserves of strength.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is thus a story of redemption and reconciliation, as sweet and sentimental at its core as it is deliriously busy on the surface. (The vibrant cinematography is by Larkin Seiple, the hyperaccelerated editing by Paul Rogers and the madly inventive production design by Jason Kisvarday.) As a drama of Asian mother-daughter conflict, it would make an appropriate double bill with Pixar’s current fantasy “Turning Red.” As a movie about the roads not taken, it taps into the inexhaustible wellspring of romantic melancholy that is Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” explicitly saluted in Evelyn’s most wistful timeline. Here, it isn’t just an irretrievable past that keeps flashing before her eyes; it’s all the tantalizing possibilities of a better, more fulfilling and meaningful life than the one she’s been leading.

And it is this very insistence on endless, simultaneous possibilities that leads me to render a verdict on “Everything Everywhere All at Once” that may seem inconclusive at best and craven at worst, but which I very much offer up in this movie’s endearing, maddening spirit. Is it a visionary triumph or a gaudy, overstuffed folly? Does it bog down in numbing repetition or discover, within that repetition, an aesthetic and philosophical energy all its own? Not to advance a circular argument, but yes to all of the above. I don’t know if this movie fully works in this universe, but I suspect it might in the next.

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

In English, Mandarin and Cantonese with English subtitles Rating: R, for some violence, sexual material and language Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes Playing: Starts March 25 in general release

Review: In ‘The Breaking Ice,’ a trio comes together for a stretch of wild abandon

Jan. 26, 2024

Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal go clubbing in the movie "All of Us Strangers."

Review: ‘All of Us Strangers’ is a ghost story, a gay romance and the year’s best movie

Dec. 20, 2023

CONCRETE UTOPIA (Lottee Entertainment / 815 Pictures)

Review: In ‘Concrete Utopia,’ a ruined Seoul seeks refuge, but the residents have other ideas

Dec. 8, 2023

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Jerry Seinfeld in a blue robe and graduation cap standing behind a wooden podium that says "Duke"

Entertainment & Arts

What’s the deal with Jerry Seinfeld? His Duke University address sparks student walkout

May 13, 2024

On a small set in Venice, legendary horrormeister Roger Corman films one of dozens of introductions he was to do into the night for an AMC horror series to run in October.

Roger Corman, independent cinema pioneer and king of B movies, dead at 98

May 11, 2024

Company Town

Shari Redstone was poised to make Paramount a Hollywood comeback story. What happened?

A rockstar and his muse are approached by the press.

Review: ‘Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg’ supplies belated respect for a rock muse

May 10, 2024

Find anything you save across the site in your account

“Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Reviewed: There’s No There There

By Richard Brody

Harry Shum Jr. and Michelle Yeoh in scene.

The movie world is awash in fantasy, and that’s a problem, because fantasy is the riskiest genre. There’s no middle ground with fantasy because there’s no ground at all. Even a middling work of realism inevitably rests on experience, observation, and knowledge, but a mediocre fantasy is a transparent emptiness, a contrivance of parts that aren’t held together by the atmosphere of social life. It’s the triple axel of cinema: when successful, fantasies are glorious, seemingly expanding the very nature of experience by way of speculative imagination. Some of the best movies of recent years—“ The Future ,” “ Us ,” and “ The French Dispatch ”—are fantasies, and their artistic success is doubled by their very resistance to the corporatization of fantasy in the overproduction and overmanagement of superhero franchises. But a failed fantasy is a wipeout, and that’s the simplest and clearest way to describe “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” a new film (opening Friday) by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (a duo called Daniels ). Were it not for the appealing and charismatic presence of its cast, it would leave nothing but a vapor puff that disperses when the lights go on.

The emptiness of “E.E.A.A.O.” is all the more disheartening inasmuch as its fantasy has a substantial and significant real-world premise, one that gets a flip and generic treatment for the sake of some neat-o special effects. “E.E.A.A.O.” is the story of a married couple, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) and Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan), who were born and raised in China and came to the United States as adults. They own a laundromat in the Simi Valley, in California, and have trouble, business and personal. The laundromat is losing money and Evelyn and Waymond are growing distant from each other; she is demanding and peremptory, and he is mild-mannered and whimsical. Her father (James Hong), called only Gong Gong (“maternal grandfather”), is visiting from China, and the couple try to maintain a cheerful front to convince him that they’ve made a success of life in America. Their daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), is a recent college graduate at loose ends; when her mother introduces Joy’s girlfriend, Becky (Tallie Medel), to Gong Gong as her “good friend”—i.e., she hides from him that Joy is queer—this failure instantly rips the mother-daughter relationship apart.

The Wangs’ biggest and most pressing problem is taxes: they’re being audited by the I.R.S. At their appointment, the auditor, Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), is stern and aggressive; she threatens to seize the Wangs’ business and personal assets, giving them until six that evening to reorganize and refile their claims. But Waymond has already given Evelyn a way out: in the elevator, he transforms into someone like himself, who’s not exactly himself, and gives Evelyn a set of instructions—on the back of a divorce filing, no less—that will enable her to enter the so-called multiverse, the realm of alternate lives that she could have lived.

What’s in a name? Sometimes, all one needs to know. The auditor’s full name is Deirdre Beaubeirdra (yes, she was named according to “The Name Game”), which exemplifies the arbitrary and sophomoric whimsy that runs through the film and governs its plot and tone. The portal to the multiverse is a janitor’s closet down the hall from Deirdre’s desk. The multiverse launch involves switching shoes to the wrong feet, special scans, special earbuds, whirlwind video effects, a murder in the closet, a punch in Deirdre’s nose, a call for security, and a fight with security in which Waymond uses his fanny pack as a lethal weapon. Despite the chaos, the multiverse very quickly emphasizes one road not taken: Evelyn, instead of leaving China with that “silly boy” (as her father calls Waymond), stays home and becomes a movie star in martial-arts films. And why not; there’s poignancy and irony built into the idea. If only Kwan and Scheinert had stuck with it and developed it. Instead, Evelyn’s alt-career merely crops up intermittently amid a plethora of other transformations—a surfeit of caprices that attempt to conceal the movie’s hollowness.

Long aggrieved and newly offended, Joy becomes Evelyn’s superhero nemesis, Jobu Tupaki, a character of many costumes who has one constant. It’s as embarrassing to say it as it is to watch onscreen: she says that she “put everything on a bagel,” and she means not the flavor but the universe itself—therefore “the bagel becomes the truth,” and the truth is that “nothing matters.” (Yes, she both wears a symbolic bagel on her head and emblazons a giant rotating one at the altar of her lair.) There’s an alternate universe in which Evelyn and Deirdre are lovers, with fingers as hot dogs squirting mustard and ketchup; one in which no life existed and Evelyn is a rock on a cliff; one in which Evelyn turns into a piñata dangling from a tree; another in which security guards get their kung-fu power from trophies stuck in their asses. And the realms interact, so Evelyn fights in the I.R.S. office with these alternate tools, whether martial arts or an egg that she’d once flung as a Benihana-style chef.

Yet, through it all, the dual stories—the couple fights to save their business and their home, and the same couple realizes different lives in China—remain basic; instead of unfolding over two-plus hours, they merely lurch ahead in plot-point-y snippets. It’s here that the definition of imagination as an artistic quality emerges—negatively. Kwan and Scheinert don’t envision in detail the daily lives of a small-business owner in California or of a celebrity in China. The stories suggest an ample array of poignant and nuanced possibilities, which go unrealized. They’d be all the stronger with a sense of subjectivity, and of alternate worlds as they leak consciousnesses into one another—not just how a laundromat owner imagines life as a martial-arts star, but also vice versa, and whether and why that might even seem preferable. (Spoiler alert: when it does happen, it only delivers a deflating, generic dash of sentimental bathos. There’s no place like home.)

Kwan and Scheinert show little interest in the experiences of their characters. Evelyn is written as a vague outline whose substance is provided by the presence, the performance, and the identity of Michelle Yeoh. The other characters offer their actors even less to work with. The C.G.I. conjures rapid-fire flashes of alternate lives, but not the pathos of feeling one of them slip away. Instead of personality, the characters have problems to solve; instead of traits, they have single-factor backstories; instead of subjectivity, they spew psychobabble and aphorisms borrowed from a superhero’s whiteboard quest. For all the gyrating action, the movie lacks physicality; the characters don’t seem to be in one another’s presence, their feet don’t touch the ground. The template for “E.E.A.A.O.” isn’t the observation of life from the amplified perspective of imagination; it’s the factitious world of superheroes, adorned with the action of martial-arts movies and the dazzle of effects and gaudy costumes, filled with undergraduate late-night epiphanies and sophomoric humor.

When Waymond expounds the rules of the multiverse to Evelyn, there might as well be a flashing sign reading “Exposition” over the screen, because there’s an absolute absence of awareness that two characters are having a meaningful conversation. It’s exactly such scenes that provide a litmus test of imagination and prove its power to illuminate reality—creating a form to give experience an original and singular identity. Instead, Kwan and Scheinert deprive their characters of identity; the protagonists are universalized, stripped of history and culture, lacking any personal connection to the wider world. With its bland and faux-universal life lessons that cheaply ethicalize expensive sensationalism, the film comes off as a sickly cynical feature-length directorial pitch reel for a Marvel movie.

The photo caption on this article has been updated.

New Yorker Favorites

The day the dinosaurs died .

What if you started itching— and couldn’t stop ?

How a notorious gangster was exposed by his own sister .

Woodstock was overrated .

Diana Nyad’s hundred-and-eleven-mile swim .

Photo Booth: Deana Lawson’s hyper-staged portraits of Black love .

Fiction by Roald Dahl: “The Landlady”

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

The Beautifully Unnerving Gaze of “Evil Does Not Exist”

By Justin Chang

“The Sympathizer” Has an Identity Crisis

By Inkoo Kang

By Moeko Fujii

American Confinement in “We Grown Now” and “Stress Positions”

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

For Parents
For Educators
Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

Get the app
Movie Reviews
Best Movie Lists
Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

Best TV Lists
Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
Common Sense Selections for TV
Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

Book Reviews
Best Book Lists
Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

Game Reviews
Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

Podcast Reviews
Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

App Reviews
Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

YouTube Channel Reviews
YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

Explaining the News to Our Kids

Family Tech Planners
Digital Skills
All Articles
Latino Culture
Black Voices
Asian Stories
Native Narratives
LGBTQ+ Pride
Best of Diverse Representation List

Celebrating Black History Month

Movies and TV Shows with Arab Leads

Celebrate Hip-Hop's 50th Anniversary

Everything everywhere all at once, common sense media reviewers.

Weird, wonderful genre-busting adventure has some violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Encourages courage, empathy, honesty, self-control

Evelyn isn't always likable, but she literally con

Movie centers a 50-something Chinese woman and her

In addition to martial arts-inspired fight sequenc

In a scene where all versions of Evelyn are quickl

Occasional strong language includes "f--k," "f---i

iPhone. Multiple references to movie Ratatouille,

Brief scenes show characters smoking cigarettes an

Positive Messages

Encourages courage, empathy, honesty, self-control, teamwork. Stresses importance of self-awareness, acceptance, resilience. Reminds viewers not to underestimate the power of laughter and small moments, that life is more about who you're with than what you have. Parent-child issues are a major theme. Story explores heavy topics such as depression, ennui, marital disappointment, and homophobia -- but with a heavy dose of levity, googly eyes, and hope.

Positive Role Models

Evelyn isn't always likable, but she literally contains multitudes. She's brave, strong-willed, and fierce. She recognizes her failures and asks for forgiveness. Waymond is goofy, optimistic, kind. Even when Evelyn is cruel or apathetic, Waymond remains devoted to their family. Joy is depressed but also loves her partner and wants to heal her unhealthy relationship. There's even a lot more to Deirdre, who's surprisingly patient and forgiving.

Diverse Representations

Movie centers a 50-something Chinese woman and her family in a way that isn't stereotypical, despite the fact that they own a laundromat in the current multiverse. Joy is queer and has a girlfriend she's trying to include in family events. Strong multigenerational theme.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

In addition to martial arts-inspired fight sequences between Evelyn and the forces from the other verses, several characters from the multiverse die and battle with weapons (usually found objects, from a fanny pack to a trophy, but also real weapons). Some violence is comic, some bloody and realistic.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

In a scene where all versions of Evelyn are quickly shown, a couple are making love, showing her face and naked shoulders (these are blink-and-miss moments). Evelyn and her husband (or different versions of him) kiss in a few scenes. Phallic sex toys are used in a fight scene. Suggestive joke about a sex toy (a "butt plug") that's used as a prize for IRS auditors; later, two different men use it to invoke their special skills. In one case, the man who uses it is naked from the waist down. His crotch area is obscured, but audiences can see his butt during the fight scenes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional strong language includes "f--k," "f---ing," "holy s--t," "s--t," "stupid," etc.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

iPhone. Multiple references to movie Ratatouille , which Evelyn thinks has to do with a raccoon instead of a rat.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Brief scenes show characters smoking cigarettes and marijuana and drinking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Everything Everywhere All at Once is a trippy sci-fi/fantasy martial arts adventure from the directors of the dark comedy Swiss Army Man . It centers on a middle-aged laundromat owner named Evelyn ( Michelle Yeoh ), who discovers she must help save the multiverse during a routine trip to file her business taxes. Expect occasional strong language (mostly several uses of "f--k" and "s--t"), as well as plenty of violence, including stylized martial arts sequences that use both real and improvised weapons and include close-range brawling. There are a few deaths and a couple of bloody scenes. People kiss, there are super-quick shots of the main character making love (the focus is on her face or back), and you'll see fighting sex toys (both as weapons and skill amplifiers). Diverse representation includes a non-stereotypical Chinese American family and two women over 50 in central roles, as well as two women in a loving and supportive relationship. Families will have plenty to discuss after watching the movie, which is best suited for older teens and adults. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

Parents say (29)
Kids say (65)

Based on 29 parent reviews

Bloody sex toys as weapons?

Rated r for a reason, what's the story.

In EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, Evelyn Wong ( Michelle Yeoh ) and her husband, Waymond ( Ke Huy Quan ), have an important appointment to file their taxes at their local IRS office because their laundromat's business taxes are under review. Complicating the day is Evelyn's elderly father ( James Hong ), who's visiting from China, and her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), who tried to introduce her girlfriend to him, much to Evelyn's chagrin. On the way to see their IRS agent, Deirdre ( Jamie Lee Curtis ), with a shopping caddy full of receipts, Evelyn has a bizarre encounter with Waymond, who explains that at that moment, he's a Waymond from the multiverse and that she could be just the Evelyn he's looking for in an attempt to defeat a common villain who's about to destroy the universe with cult-like devotees. She's just one of many Evelyns across the multiverse, and in order to "verse jump" to attain her other selves' skills, she has to perform tasks both wacky and mundane, like switching shoes to the wrong feet, drinking half-and-half, giving herself four papercuts, and, in one case, sitting on a butt plug. Using all of her other versions' skills, Evelyn just might be able to keep the villain from sucking everyone and everything into the void.

Is It Any Good?

A crowd-pleasing, genre-bending adventure that's funny, dizzying, and infinitely memorable, this movie is also a lot . If the screenplays for Kung Fu Hustle , The Matri x , Being John Malkovich , Spaceballs , Kill Bill , and Spider-Man: No Way Home were blended together, the result would approximate this movie. There's much to keep track of, and the filmmakers ingeniously wrap layers and layers onto what sounds like a boring framing story: A 50-something Chinese couple tries to refile their taxes on the same day they throw a party at their laundromat to impress their elderly father/father-in-law. But there's nothing remotely boring or predictable about what happens throughout the day, as Evelyn expands her consciousness through the silliest of tasks to psychically visit other versions of herself based on all the "sliding door" decisions she's made. The cast is all praise-worthy, but particular kudos go to Yeoh, Quan, and Curtis for their joyously watchable performances. Hsu and Hong are also fabulous as the melancholy (and ironically named) Joy and the stubborn Chinese father who each have a complicated relationship with Evelyn.

Speaking of joy, it's best to see this film knowing only that it's worth seeing. While there aren't a lot of huge twists, there's a definite nonsensical and communal energy to it all, and it's ideal to watch it surrounded by laughing, cringing, and even crying moviegoers. One multiverse sight gag worth teasing involves a Ratatouille -like conceit, except the animal is a raccoon, not a rat. That one features Harry Shum Jr. as the Linguini-like chef at a Japanese steakhouse where one of the multi-Evelyns works. It's not only hilarious, but, like the movie, surprisingly touching. Parent-child issues are a major theme, and the story explores heavy topics such as depression, ennui, marital disappointment, and homophobia, but with a heavy dose of levity, googly eyes, and hope.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Everything Everywhere All at Once . When is it funny, and when is it dark? What's the impact of it, and why is it necessary to the story?

Discuss mental health and family dynamics and how they're depicted in the movie. What do the main characters learn from their experiences?

Which of the multiverse Evelyns was your favorite? How did all of the Evelyns' skills help the main Evelyn fulfill her destiny? How about the various Waymonds?

Discuss the importance of racial, ethnic, and generational representation in popular culture . Can you think of other movies that center Asian characters or older women?

How do the characters demonstrate courage , empathy , self-control , and teamwork ? What makes those important character strengths ?

Movie Details

In theaters : March 25, 2022
On DVD or streaming : June 7, 2022
Cast : Michelle Yeoh , Ke Huy Quan , Stephanie Hsu
Directors : Dan Kwan , Daniel Scheinert
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Asian actors
Studio : A24
Genre : Action/Adventure
Topics : STEM , Sports and Martial Arts
Character Strengths : Courage , Empathy , Self-control , Teamwork
Run time : 132 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : some violence, sexual material
Awards : Academy Award , Golden Globe
Last updated : March 20, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

Being John Malkovich

Want personalized picks for your kids' age and interests?

Kung Fu Hustle

Swiss Army Man

Turning Red

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Cult classics, indie films, related topics.

Self-control
Sports and Martial Arts

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

an image, when javascript is unavailable

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

Michelle yeoh in ‘everything everywhere all at once’: film review | sxsw 2022.

A Chinese American laundromat owner fretting over a tax audit gets pulled into a violent multiverse clash in this sci-fi adventure comedy by the filmmaking team known as Daniels.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

Share this article on Facebook
Share this article on Twitter
Share this article on Flipboard
Share this article on Email
Show additional share options
Share this article on Linkedin
Share this article on Pinit
Share this article on Reddit
Share this article on Tumblr
Share this article on Whatsapp
Share this article on Print
Share this article on Comment

In 2016’s Swiss Army Man , gonzo auteur duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert made an aggressive bid for cult immortality by casting Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse so gaseous he could double as a decomposing jet ski. So it shouldn’t be surprising that one of the triggers for characters jumping between parallel universes in Everything Everywhere All at Once is to take a flying leap and impale themselves on jumbo butt plugs. Or to be precise, Internal Revenue Service Employee of the Month Awards unmistakably shaped like those sex toys, which doesn’t make the gag any less puerile.

Nothing if not true to its title, this frenetically plotted serve of stoner heaven is insanely imaginative and often a lot of fun. But at two hours-plus, it becomes unrelenting and wearisome. While a certain degree of chaotic maximalist overload seems inherent to any film about a multiverse rippling with a violent threat, the nonstop jumble of mad invention here sacrifices control.

Full credits

Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Opening Night) Distributor: A24 Production companies: Gozie Agbo, Year of the Rat, in association with Ley Line Entertainment Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tallie Medel, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., Biff Wiff, Sunita Mani, Aaron Lazar, Brian Le, Andy Le, Neravana Cabral, Chelsey Goldsmith, Craig Henningsen Director-screenwriters: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert Producers: Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Mike Larocca, Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, Jonathan Wang Executive producers: Tim Headington, Theresa Steele Page, Todd Makurath, Josh Rudnik, Michelle Yeoh Director of photography: Larkin Seiple Production designer: Jason Kisvarday Costume designer: Shirley Kurata Music: Son Lux Editor: Paul Rogers Visual effects supervisor: Zak Stoltz Casting: Sarah Halley Finn

THR Newsletters

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Anya taylor-joy reflects on intense ‘furiosa’ filming: “i’ve never been more alone”, can kevin costner’s ‘horizon,’ debuting in cannes, make hollywood westerns great again, ‘lord of the rings’ anime feature, dc’s ‘creature commandos’ set for warner bros. presentation at annecy, chris hemsworth reacts to scorsese and coppola’s marvel criticism: “it felt harsh”, andrew garfield to join julia roberts in luca guadagnino thriller ‘after the hunt’, cannes: acclaimed chinese indie film ‘a new old play’ sells to france, japan, se asia (exclusive).

pop Culture
Facebook Navigation Icon
Twitter Navigation Icon
WhatsApp icon
Instagram Navigation Icon
Youtube Navigation Icon
Snapchat Navigation Icon
TikTok Navigation Icon
pigeons & planes
newsletters
Youtube logo nav bar 0 youtube
Instagram Navigation Icon instagram
Twitter Navigation Icon x
Facebook logo facebook
TikTok Navigation Icon tiktok
Snapchat Navigation Icon snapchat
Apple logo apple news
Flipboard logo nav bar 1 flipboard
Instagram Navigation Icon google news
WhatsApp icon whatsapp
RSS feed icon rss feed

Complex Global

united states
united kingdom
netherlands
philippines
complex chinese

Work with us

cookie settings

california privacy

public notice

accessibility statement

COMPLEX participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means COMPLEX gets paid commissions on purchases made through our links to retailer sites. Our editorial content is not influenced by any commissions we receive.

Complex.com is a part of

Breaking Down Everything Kendrick Said About Drake on “Meet the Grahams”

There’s a lot to unpack in Kendrick Lamar’s “Meet the Grahams.” Here’s a thorough analysis.

So much is happening right now. Mere minutes after Drake dropped his “Family Matters” diss song, Kendrick Lamar responded with “Meet the Grahams,” and the battlefield is now decimated.

In his nuclear response, Kendrick goes after Drake by addressing each of his immediate family members in a 6-minute song, where he accuses the Toronto rapper of having a daughter that he’s been hiding from the world, a substance addiction, a gambling addiction, engaging in various sex crimes, and several other dark revelations. The title of the song references the way Dot structures each verse, speaking directly to members of Drake’s family, and it could be a double entendre about how he possibly exposes another child of the Toronto rapper.

“Meet the Grahams” arrived very shortly after Drake accused Dot of domestic violence and infidelity in “Family Matters” on Friday night. The similarity in the subject matter (and titles) of the two songs suggests that Dot might have already known “Family Matters” was going to come out, so he prepared “Meet the Grahams” in advance.

None of the allegations on either side have been verified with concrete evidence or receipts, but before another diss track drops, here’s a full breakdown of everything Kendrick Lamar said about Drake while addressing each of his immediate family members on “Meet The Grahams.”

The cover art

The artwork for “Meet the Grahams” is a zoomed-out photo of the cover art for “6:16 in LA,” which now reveals even more items laid out next to each other, including a bottle of Ozempic prescribed to Drake, a business card for celebrity jeweler Nadine Ghosn (who has worked with Drake), a receipt for Popular Jewelry in New York City (a store that Drake has been seen shopping at), black leather Maybach gloves from the “6:16: in LA” cover, and a shirt.

According to DJ Akademiks , the items came from Dennis Graham's suitcase, and Kendrick somehow got a hold of it. Kendrick raps about each of these items in different ways throughout the song, saying Drake has substance and spending problems, before doubling down on claims that he uses Ozempic.

The jewelry receipts could also be a direct response to rumors that the ring featured in Drake’s “Family Matters” video was his fiancé’s engagement ring. This might be Kendrick’s way of suggesting that Drake simply bought a copy from one of his go-to jewelers, instead of getting his hands on the real thing. Alternatively, it could also connect back to Kendrick’s line on “6:16 in LA” when he rapped, “Find the jewels like Kash Doll, I just need you to think.”

The Adonis Graham Verse

Drake in concert wearing a black jacket, performing with a microphone

Kendrick dedicates the first verse of the song to directly addressing Drake’s son Adonis, as a way to speak to the rapper.

“ Sometimes our parents make mistakes that affect us until we grown/ And you a good kid that need good leadership/ Let me be your mentor, since your daddy don't teach you shit/ Never let a man piss on your leg, son ”

After offering to be the father figure that Adonis does not have, Kendrick makes references to an alleged incident in 2015 where T.I. said that his late friend urinated on Drake in the club.

“ Never fall in the escort business, that's bad religion/ Please remember, you could be a bitch even if you got bitches/ Never code switch, whether right or wrong, you a Black man/ Even if it don’t benefit your goals, do some push-ups

This is where Kendrick starts to throw around heavy accusations that Drake is involved in the escort business, while continuing to take jabs at the rapper’s biracial ethnicity. Dot is satirically saying that Adonis will grow up to be a “Black man,” so he should embrace it, unlike his father, who Kendrick is insinuating only wants to be Black when it’s convenient.

“ Get some discipline, don’t cut them corners like your daddy did/ Fuck what Ozempic did/ Don't pay to play with them Brazilians, get a gym membership/ Understand, no throwin' rocks and hidin' hands, that's law/ Don't be ashamed 'bout who you wit,' that's how he treat your moms/ Don't have a kid to hide a kid to hide again, be sure/ Five percent will comprehend but ninety-five is lost ”

First, Dot implies that Drake has had cosmetic surgery and uses the weight loss drug Ozempic. Then he advises Adonis not to “have a kid to hide a kid to hide again,” which is his way of alluding to later allegations that Drake has been hiding his first-born child this entire time. The five percent bar is a double entendre that references the Five-Percent Nation as a way to say that only five percent of listeners will fully understand the truth of his previous bar about Drake hiding another child.

The Sandra & Dennis Graham Verse

Singer performing on stage with a microphone, wearing a casual outfit with a necklace

Kendrick addresses both of Drake’s parents together in the second verse, which might be a jab in itself because the two have been separated since the rapper’s youth. Kendrick uses them as vessels to dive deeper into more serious allegations he has against Drake, including his relationships with underaged women and how he operates in the celebrity world.

“ I think niggas like him should die/ Him and Weinstein should get fucked up in a cell for the rest they life/ He hates black women, hypersexualizes them, with kinks of a nympho fetish / Grew facial hair 'cause he understood bein' a beard just fit him better/ He got sex offenders on OVO that he keep on a monthly allowance”

Kendrick makes the severe implication that Drake is similar to Harvey Weinstein, a man who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women, saying the Toronto rapper deserves the same fate in jail. Kendrick adds that Drake “hates Black women,” which is a sentiment that’s been thrown his way many times in recent years for several reasons, including the unfavorable way he’s spoken about women like Megan Thee Stallion and Rihanna in his music for seemingly no reason.

The “sex offenders on OVO” that Kendrick is referring to could possibly be Baka Not Nice who was arrested and charged with prostituting a 22-year-old woman in 2014 (and plead guilty to assaulting her in 2015) but there’s no way to be certain.

“ I been in this industry twelve years, I'ma tell y'all one lil' secret/ It's some weird shit goin' on and some of these artists be here to police it/ They be streamlinin' victims all inside of they home and callin' em Tinder/ Then leak videos of themselves to further push their agendas ”

The music industry has been filled with stories of sexual misconduct, grooming, and other heinous crimes for decades, and Kendrick Lamar is implying that Drake has used his home for something deeply nefarious (like a sex trafficking ring), insinuating that the rapper’s leaked nude from February was being used as bait. These allegations come shortly after Diddy’s home was raided by the Department of Homeland Security while being investigated for sex trafficking.

“ Katt Williams said, ‘Get you the truths,’ so I'ma get mines / The embassy 'bout to get raided, too, it's only a matter of time/ Ayy, LeBron, keep the family away, hey, Curry, keep the family away/ To anybody that embody the love for they kids, keep the family away”

Dot references Kat Williams’ viral episode on Club Shay Shay where the comedian suggested that he knew about some of the inner workings of the entertainment industry, which is Kendrick’s way of saying that he’s now going to peel back the curtain on Drake as well. Kendrick believes that Drake’s home, dubbed “The Embassy,” is going to get investigated and raided, similar to what’s happening to Diddy right now. Then Dot warns celebrities like LeBron James and Stephen Curry (who both have daughters) not to bring their children around Drake.

The Hidden Daughter Verse

In one of the most salacious parts of the song, Kendrick accuses Drake of having an 11-year-old daughter that he has been hiding from the world (a claim that Drake immediately refuted on Instagram ). Kendrick also uses the verse to discuss Drake’s drug addiction and double down on calling him a deadbeat dad, similar to what Pusha-T did on “Story of Adidon.”

“ Should be teachin' you time tables or watchin' Frozen with you/ Or at your eleventh birthday, singin' poems with you/Instead, he be in Turks, payin' for sex and poppin' Percs ”

Kendrick reveals how old Drake’s alleged daughter is, making her five years older than Adonis. If the math is accurate, she would have been born right around the time Frozen came out, since the film was released in Nov. 2013. Then Kendrick says that Drake is busy going on vacations to Turks and Caicos (a destination he often raps about on songs like “Jumbotron Shit Poppin” ) and doing drugs, instead of being a present father.

“ His father prolly didn't claim him neither / History do repeats itself, sometimes it don't need a reason/ But I would like to say it's not your fault he's hidin' another child/ Give 'em grace, this the reason I made Mr. Morale/ So our babies like you can cope later ”

Once again, Kendrick suggests that Drake is an absentee dad because his own father wasn’t in his life as a child, using the same verbiage of “hiding a child” that Pusha-T did on his infamous “The Story of Adidon” diss track. Kendrick maintains his position as a therapist figure as he references his last album Mr. Morale, where he has songs like “Father Time” that directly address his own troubled upbringing with his father and how he learned to overcome his “daddy issues.”

“ I'll tell you who your father is, just play this song when it rains / Yes, he's a hitmaker, songwriter, superstar, right / And a fuckin' deadbeat that should never say ‘More life’ ”

The closing bars of this verse might be an allusion to J. Cole’s track “4 Your Eyez Only,” where he leaves a message to the daughter of his slain friend. Kendrick mirrors those sentiments to Drake’s alleged child by telling her that her father is a “hitmaker, songwriter, [and] superstar.” But this is a deeply personal diss record, so Dot closes the verse by also reminding her (and him) that he’s a deadbeat, turning Drake’s album title More Life into a double entendre against him, saying that he should never use it as a catchphrase or create any more children.

The Aubrey Verse

Silhouetted performer with arms extended on a concert stage, engaging with the audience

Kendrick saves The Boy for last, addressing his adversary directly as he explains that all of this could have been avoided if Drake never brought up his family throughout their beef.

“ Dear Aubrey, I know you probably thinkin' I wanted to crash your party / But truthfully, I don't have a hatin' bone in my body / This supposed to be a good exhibition within the game / But you fucked up the moment you called out my family's name ”

Kendrick opens the track by acknowledging that he stomped on Drake’s diss track “Family Matters” by dropping his response immediately, but clarifies that he didn’t have any real animosity towards him until Drake brought up his wife’s name on “Push Ups” when he rapped, “I be with some bodyguards like Whitney.” That bar sparked rumors that Kendrick’s wife had an affair with his bodyguard, in the same way that Whitney Houston did in The Bodyguard . Dot confirms that once his family was brought up, it stopped being a friendly match between the two.

“ You got gamblin' problems, drinkin' problems/ Pill-poppin' and spendin' problems, bad with money, whorehouse/ Solicitin' women problems, therapy's a lovely start ”

Kendrick succinctly summarizes all of his implications from earlier in the song, calling Drake a drug addict who solicits sex from women and needs therapy. Drake’s “gambling problems” have been discussed by others before, in part because of how often he works with the betting app Stake. The jewelry receipts and pill bottles on the cover artwork also feed into Kendrick’s narrative that Drake has a spending and substance problem.

“ You a body shamer, you gon' hide them baby mommas, ain't ya? You embarrassed of 'em, that's not right, that ain't how momma raised us / Take that mask off, I wanna see what's under them achievements / Why believe you? You never gave us nothin' to believe in”

On “When To Say When,” Drake rapped , “Baby mama fluke, but I love her for who she is,” and now Kendrick is implying that Drake has even more children with women that he’s ashamed to be around in public. Dot challenges Drake’s integrity and questions the persona he’s built up around himself, thanks to all of his awards and achievements. Then he goes into all of the things he believes Drake has lied about, including his religious beliefs, referring to Drake putting out a massive hit “God’s Plan” before more recently questioning his faith on “Wick Man.”

“ You lied about your son, you lied about your daughter, huh/ You lied about them other kids that's out there hopin' that you come/ You lied about the only artist that can offer you some help/ Fuck a rap battle, this a long life battle with yourself ”

Kendrick closes the track by planting even more seeds about Drake being a liar and having children that the public doesn’t know about. Then he brings the song full circle by saying that Drake lied about him and his family throughout their back-and-forth, which is what forced Dot’s hand to get extremely personal and say “fuck a rap battle.”

SHARE THIS STORY

Complex Music Newsletter

Stay ready. The playlists, good reads and video interviews you need—delivered every week.

By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you’re agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our