Lists of female actors who haven't had hugely successful careers would fill a very long parchment scroll, and have Michelle Yeoh's name on it. Although many American film audiences were not familiar with Yeoh until the 1997 Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies – to be followed a few years later by Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – she was part of the 1990 Hong Kong film explosion, perhaps most notably. Se Johnny Too stars as one of the natso (and great) 1993 fantasy adventure heroic Trio's alongside Maggie Cheung and Anita Mui. For that reason alone, it's thrilling to see Yeoh's career flourish, no matter what you think about her latest project, the action fantasy Everywhere All At Once, directed by filmmaker duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Sheinert. , who go by it. Sobriquet Daniels. Everything is fringe and wayward everywhere, too often just frenzied to madness. But Yeoh anchors it. When it comes to the story around her, she gives you plenty to hang on to. He may have started his career as an action star, but he also has a face that keeps you hooked. That's equal parts gravity and celestial luminosity.
Everything Everywhere is a film about family—and about the pressures and expectations Chinese parents place on their children, especially framed as a head-to-head journey, with a middle-aged woman as her superhero. In form of. Yeoh's character, Evelyn, is the respectable, stressed-out owner of a laundry facility, which she runs with her mischievous but somewhat retired husband, Waymond. (He is played astonishingly by the Vietnam-born artist Ke Hye Quan, who had early career success as a child star in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, the only American for adult Asian actors in that film. Movies in the 1990s and early 2000s were rare to find the role.) As the film begins, Evelyn throws a birthday party for her elderly and forever disapproving father (James Hong) from China. making plans; She rejected everyone when she moved to America years ago. His daughter, Joy (Stephanie Sue), is in a serious relationship with a woman, a fact Evelyn is reluctant to admit. And she's facing an IRS audit: The agent is played by a frown, obstinate Jamie Lee Curtis, a figure of Grotesquely with a very tight turtleneck protruding into her unsightly (and apparently artificial) pot belly.
Yet that summary does not begin to suggest many directions with this story by Daniels; Its excavation comes out like the matches of a Sputnik chandelier. (Daniels' last film was the similarly uncredited black comedy Swiss Army Man from 2016, starring Paul Dano as a man on a deserted island and Daniel Radcliffe as a corpse.) Once Waymond and When Evelyn arrives at the IRS office, Waymond's character shifts: he plays a headset over his wife's head and informs her that the fate of a complex multiverse is in his hands. He then proceeds to kick the butts of IRS protection, using his trusty fanny-pack as a weapon. Meanwhile, Evelyn sees her life passing before her very eyes, and also sees another path she might have taken in an alternate universe. (This is one of the funniest jokes in the film, a playful take on the idea that because Yeoh was actually a superstar in a country that was not the United States, his success may have been earned in another universe as well. is.) There's more, and much more: In a multiverse, humans have hotdogs hardwired to fingers; An extended gag that incorporates the butt plug welcomes it; A divine but benevolent entity named Jobu Tupaki wreaks havoc at every turn.
Daniels has a distinct and welcome versatility in style, and he is happy to stage the picture's many martial-arts action sequences. Yeoh spring to action, it's a pleasure to see her character find a new lease on life through speed and speed; Her every move is rendered with ballerina grace. (It should come as no surprise that Yeoh began her career as a ballet dancer, and even as she turns 60, she still has moves.) But Daniels's They have too many ideas, and they don't realize that the mediocre has been left behind. People must have made great people shine. How many butt-plug jokes does a movie really need?
The best element of everything, everywhere, is the discovery of the fairly straightforward idea that lies beneath all insanity: however often there is tension, acknowledged or otherwise, between any mother and daughter, of Asian mothers and their daughters. The relationships between are exclusively full. Evelyn is particularly disappointed in Joy for being out of college, but she expresses her displeasure by scolding her daughter for being too fat. These kinds of comments are par for the course in some families, regardless of cultural background, but that doesn't make them any less stinging. Daniels gets an unusual and powerful allegory for the layer of weeping desperation that underlies Evelyn and Joey's love for one another—it's the film's best conceit (and no, I won't give it away). But even if you walk away from everything, everywhere feeling like you've just encountered a disorganized, tedious mess, Yeoh's dazzling charm remains unaffected. Daniels may not be your kind of filmmaker — he's probably not mine — but anyone who makes such a showcase for yoh earns a gold star in this universe, or another.