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Saturday, December 31, 2022

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022)

The ‘Cinderella Pic‘ of 2022 hit all the right buttons: non-sequel original story, diversity cast, LGBTQ+-friendly, top-grossing Indie release, full theatrical roll-out; no wonder it charmed the award-circuit.  Michelle Yeoh, a Laundromat owner/operator with troublesome finances, taxes & family, is multitasking to beat the band before writer/directors Dan Kwan & Daniel Scheinert toss her into the planetary multi-verse where multiple versions of her father, her husband, her daughter, her tax auditor & herself are living messy lives of their own . . . or trying to kill her.  Quite the technical feat, but one that cools off as the film keeps turning unexpected corners.  With so many personalties to keep in the air (coming & going, falling to the wayside before springing back to life), the film suffers more than usual from multi-universe impermanence: when every story beat is reversible, nothing’s really at stake.  Why invest emotionally or intellectually?  And what’s with the cast?  No one feels remotely related to anyone else on screen.  (The filmmakers seem to recognize this, constantly reminding us that Ke Huy Quan is Yeoh’s husband .)  Even good ideas, like a pair of lonely boulders assuming the roles of mother & daughter stuck with Borscht Belt shtick when they ought to sound like ersatz Samuel Beckett.  And what’s Claude Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ doing all over the soundtrack?  Heard on piano, in orchestral arrangements, fitted with lyrics for a choir.  The film really does deliver on its promise though, exhaustingly so, as if the spaces had all been removed: everythingeverywhereallatonce.  Phew!!  How ‘bout A FEW THINGS IN ONE OR TWO PLACES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Didn’t SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE/’18 do this sort of free association a lot better?   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/05/spider-man-into-spider-verse-2018.html

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