Everything Everywhere All At Once: Movie Review 

Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huay Quan, Stephanie Hsu, Jamie Lee Curtis, James Hong, Jenny Slate
Director: The Daniels

Fresh off the love story between a man and a farting corpse, The Daniels return with a movie that confounds expectations - but strangely feels trapped between being too over-stuffed and too impressive.

A film of two halves, Everything Everywhere All At Once crackles and zips when it needs to (before lapsing into crowd-pleasing puerile over-indulgence) as it tells the tale of Michelle Yeoh's Evelyn, a laundromat owner on the cusp of divorce

Heading to file her taxes with her father and somewhat limp husband Waymond (Quan), Evelyn finds her world immediately upturned in a lift, when it's revealed she's the hero who could save the multiverse. 

Facing off against Jamie Lee Curtis' tax officer, Evelyn suddenly discovers skills she never had and worlds of options she only believed were few and far apart - but will she embrace her destiny and also what her past has made her?

From hotdog-handed lovers to a bagel threatening the end of the world, Everything Everywhere All At Once has probably one idea too many in its sci-fi film that mixes martial arts with the loopiness of parts of Douglas Adams.

The metaphysical mixes with the meta in parts, and the results are sometimes dizzying, always refreshing to see and should be applauded for creativity and originality. There's much in Everything Everywhere All At Once that shines, and offers hope for fresh eyes on a genre that's sometimes in danger of disappearing into itself.

Elements of the Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Family Guy to name but a few are all blended in with breakneck pacy editing and relative aplomb as the chaos unfolds across universes and ideas.

Thankfully, anchoring all of this chaos and anarchy as it unfolds is a very human turn from Yeoh, and a deeply commendable turn from Quan - at its heart, Everything Everywhere All At Once is really a family drama about acceptance and finding your place in this universe (or any one, if the Daniels are to be believed),

It's just as well these two are here, because at times the sprawl becomes overwhelming as it plays out.

The Daniels are wildly creative, but one can't help escape the fact that if slightly tighter reins were employed at the writing stage of this, and even at the editing stages, some of the bloat could have been jettisoned to create a taut adventure that excels without any of the fat. 

As it is, in places, despite the humour and the craft on show, there's a feeling of cinematic smugness which overwhelms and stunts the bittersweet edges of the relationships.

However, for a journey that shows cinema can still be a devilishly creative and wildly inventive place, Everything Everywhere All At Once is second to none. It's just a shame that occasionally, it doesn't stop to breathe, throw out some of the more puerile edges and revel in its own cleverness, rather than overstuffing the whole affair.