Reel Entropy

5/10 They say the two things you can’t avoid are death and taxes. Even in a movie about jumping through the multiverse, one that built an advertising campaign around introducing the concept to audiences, the characters can’t find their way out of the IRS office.

San Fernando, California- Evelyn Quan Wang (Michelle Yeoh, who also produces executively) is dealing with everything at once. Her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), is leaving her, her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is gay and her failing self-service laundry is under audit by the IRS for fraudulent business expenses, charges she hopes she can get out of by playing dumb but also seems to genuinely not understand. At the IRS office, Waymond Wang suddenly becomes a different version of himself from a parallel universe and urgently tells Evelyn that she is the key to saving the multiverse from the Jobu Tupaki, a nihilistic gay multiverse demon who’s destroying everything for reasons unknown.

Everything Everywhere All at Once would be more appropriately titled Martial Arts in a drabbier-than-you’d-expect IRS Office for about 20 minutes too long. The movie advertised on its expansive, multiversal settings is uncomfortably cramped, and several choices draw a lot of attention to how cramped it is. The movie was made for an audience that may not know what a multiverse is, so the movie dedicates a lot of time to fleshing out its version of the concept and impressing what an expansive idea this is, but then it spends the rest of its time presenting a multiverse that feels extremely small.