The ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once' Enigma Keeps Baffling Me (and Others)

At some point in the early summer there was a sense that Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan’s “Everything Everywhere All At Once” would have a tough road ahead in its Oscar hopes.

Then ‘Everything Everywhere’ topped our mid-year critics poll, appearing on 40% of the lists submitted. It also became an indie smash at the box-office, and A24’s highest-grossing movie of all-time with a cumulative intake of $101 million. It’s just been that kind of year at the movies

Yes, here we are, many months later, and it’s practically a lock. We are being told and, are supposed to believe, that a 142 minute movie about multiverses, taxes, millennial angst and over-the-top visual nothingness is going to be a hit with the AMPAS voting body (average demographic over 50, white and male). I believe voters will go with the current and nominate the damn thing, but mostly because a vocal cabal of industry people have been banging the drums for EEAO for nearly 5 months now.

This is an ice cold film, delivered in a relentless ADD-infused assault on the senses. Ironically, Kwan has admitted he wrote the film as an attempt to recognize and understand his previously undiagnosed ADHD, but why should we suffer in the process?

An Academy-voting screenwriter of several top-tier dramas in the ‘90s, had emailed me about my famous (or infamous) mixed review of “Everything Everywhere All At Once”. He seemed to be in agreement about my qualms in regards to this frenetic film:

Hi, Jordan — I just want to say kudos for calling out this empty drivel of a movie. I really don’t get the praise either. Even the action scenes were impossible to follow without getting a mind-inducing headache. Did the filmmakers just spitball the entire movie? It sure looked like it — there was no discipline to the screenplay, no nuance to the damn thing, just an assaultive barrage on the senses. You have to take Ritalin to follow this trivial movie from beginning to end. I get it that the message is “love conquers all” even in a universe devoid of meaning but that’s pretty schmaltzy stuff. Cringe.

Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman has now seen it, seven months after its release, and is NOT DOWN on it. He’s also quizzed two Academy voters about it:

“Indeed, just by accident, I wound up discussing [Everything Everywhere] with two pretty solid Academy voters. Their response? ‘We turned it off, and there was good stuff there.” The visuals are dazzling, but are put together with some form of ADHD. If there’s a story in the alternate universe, I couldn’t figure it out. This is a comic book movie pretending to be something else — maybe Cloud Atlas, but that movie didn’t work either.”

This afternoon, I spoke to a screenwriter, part of the writers branch, who has seen “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” I wanted to get a quote from him about the film, here it is:

“I didn't hate it. I think the idea of a lo-fi metaverse is cool. Making it literally a Mom-and-Pop lo-fi metaverse, also cool. There's imagination to it, as in the sequence of two rocks talking to each other. To me the problem is that it has a very puerile, Millennial, babyish sensibility, the hot-dog fingers and the googly eyes and all that stuff. Kind of poor man's Michel Gondry to me.”

Matt Neglia had reported last week that at an Academy members screening, the film played like gangbusters with voters in attendance. Industry superfans of EEAO, those who have publicly claimed their love for this film, include Park Chan-wook, Miles Teller, Riz Ahmed, Sian Heder, Guillermo del Toro, Anne Hathaway, Scott Derrickson, Colman Domingo, Sam Rockwell, Edgar Wright, Kumail Nanjiani, John M. Chu, Zoe Kazan, Christopher Miller, Rian Johnson, Tobey Maguire, SZA, Andrew Garfield, Reese Whitherspoon, Kogonada, Keke Palmer, Barry Jenkins, Lilly Wachowski, Florence Pugh, Jodie Foster, The Russos, Neil Gaiman, Charlize Theron and Mike Flanagan.

As much as I was mixed on the movie, “Everything Everywhere All At Once” is going to get a Best Picture nomination. Maybe even a Best Actress nod for Michelle Yeoh and Supporting Actress honors for either Stephanie Hsu and/or Jamie Lee Curtis. You can lock those up in the bank. Strange times.