Everything Everywhere All At Once

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

95% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 311 reviews; I'm part of the 5 percent)

Runtime: 140 agonizing minutes

Directed by: The Daniels (how pretentious)

Starring: A bunch of actors who I wished were in something I actually liked, especially James Hong

From: A24, as who else could release something like this?

Without a doubt the most polarizing movie review I'll ever write.

This will be a rather lengthy piece yet that is necessary for me to try and convey just why I am incapable of seeing the “magic” that many hundreds of thousands did in this motion picture. A few months ago was the only time I saw the trailer for Everything; I was rather perplexed so I figured it was the usual A24 nonsense I can skip. Only after it exploded in popularity did I find it was from the directors of that farting corpse movie, something I rejected wholesale after seeing a trailer for that once and realized it was about a farting corpse. At times I did think of checking out something that was for the time the most highly rated movie ever on Letterboxd; hearing such things as “like Rick and Morty”, butt-plugs, dildos, and other similar comments gave me a lot of pause. Yet I finally took the plunge (as this is still in some cinemas) and this was one of two theatrical experiences from yesterday; the other one I'll review on Monday.

For weeks now I have been awfully wary of EEAAO, yet never in this universe could I have ever expected a reaction where I absolutely loathed most everything about the motion picture. From the very first scene, it was loud and chaotic in the worst way for me. Talk about “a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It was only a harbinger of things to come. What I got was an utterly nonsense story in a universe that not only made no sense, why should I care or be invested if it's a world with no ground rules whatsoever? That was far from the biggest issue I took with this.

The “humor”; it's as if a 13 year old on a crack binge (that, or some edgelord) came up with all those wacky elements that are supposed to be hilarious and/or provocative. Many appear to have a Pavlovian response to such things as dildos, butt-plugs, stupid spoofs of Ratatouille, black bagels, and... hot dog fingers?! Sorry, but that's not me. Two plus hours of that puerile humor and aggressively annoying characters made this for a miserable watch; how I survived until the end was a miracle as it felt more like a 20 hour, 20 minute motion picture. I've never seen a movie so forced, so “try hard” in my entire life.

By the end of this movie that was WAY too long for the points it was trying to make-talk about “using a sledgehammer to try and kill a gnat”-I realized the points were... something you'd hear in a Hallmark Channel movie! They were nice points and all (so was the message of LGBTQ+ acceptance; I just wish those same few points weren't repeated ad nauseum) but that did not make this arduous journey feel worthwhile for me. Honestly, this movie was the antithesis of almost everything I want in a motion picture—something apparently designed to be as repellent to me as possible.

Not liking a movie that everyone else does is not a first for me; Fury Road is something not enjoyable to me at all except for the astounding action scenes. But with films like that at least I could understand why most loved Fury Road, The Joker, Toy Story 4, The Last Jedi or even most of what Christopher Nolan has directed. Yet there is NOTHING about this that I can comprehend whatsoever. Why do most think this is hilarious? Why were so many moved by the plot? How has it made more than 82 million dollars (!) worldwide? Why does something so bizarre have around a 90 percent approval rating on both Google and Rotten Tomatoes' Audience Score? For that matter, if this is like a show made for Adult Swim, why do people like that too? The one time I tried to watch Robot Chicken long ago, that was more than enough to turn me off. To steal a line from elsewhere on Letterboxd, I had an allergic reaction to EEAAO. Why do so many see magic in this infantile preposterous motion picture and say it's “one of the best in the past decade”? Entire essays could be written about why and it wouldn't matter. My brain is just fractured when it comes to this.

I won't give my entire life story explaining why this is the case but last night was not the first time I wondered if I was in the wrong part of the multiverse or wished I was more “normal” like the general public. My tastes and opinions just sometimes are wildly different from the norm. I could ask to be in the universe where (to be trivial) “reality” television and loathsome internet personalities weren't so popular, or to be more serious a universe where the past 6 or so years weren't as bad for Planet Earth and we had gas prices not be outrageous and the United States not be torn apart by cable news networks & leaders that sought to divide the population... point is, it'd just be trivial for me to be in a universe where I understood the popularity of EEAAO.

There was no joy in me getting so angry about a film centered around Chinese-Americans, gave juicy roles to both Michelle Yeoh & James Hong, and featured a young lesbian couple. Hell, this not being a lazy rehash from the completely rotten modern Hollywood system is also nice. But like I said, EEAAO was the polar opposite of what is appealing to me as a film fan. I never thought it would have been the best decision to have avoided this altogether but Lord knows there are many other life decisions where I wish I would have made the correct decision.