---
title: "Everything Everywhere All at Once"
year: 2022
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/everything-everywhere-all-at-once"
fi1m_score: 77
critics_score: 81
critics_reviews: 22
published: "2026-09-20T08:31:52.265588+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-20T08:31:52.802200+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Directed by Daniel Scheinert, Dan Kwan · 2h 20m · MPA R · Action, Adventure, Science Fiction

**Fi1m score: 77** · Critics 81 from 22 reviews

*In a sentence:* The multiverse has hot-dog fingers, a raccoon chef and a tax audit, and the best thing in it is a husband being kind

> Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert throw every universe they can think of at a laundrette and a tax audit. Underneath is a film about a mother and daughter, and Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan keep finding it faster than the directors can bury it.

## Synopsis

Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) runs a laundrette with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), and today is a bad day. Her father, Gong Gong (James Hong), is visiting and expects a Chinese New Year party. Her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) wants to bring her girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel) to it. Waymond is carrying divorce papers he cannot bring himself to hand over. And the family’s receipts are due at the tax office before a weary inspector, Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). In the lift on the way up, Waymond stops being Waymond: a version of him from another universe has borrowed his body to tell Evelyn that she is the one person who can stop a being called Jobu Tupaki from unmaking everything.

## Review

Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert made [*Swiss Army Man*](https://film.one/film/swiss-army-man), a film about a farting corpse that turned out to be about loneliness. *Everything Everywhere All at Once* is the same trick at forty times the scale. Evelyn Wang runs a laundrette, is being audited, and is told in a lift at the tax office that every choice she never made is being lived out by another Evelyn somewhere, and that she can reach across and borrow what those women know. From that the directors build a martial-arts film, a mother-and-daughter story, a comedy about hot-dog fingers and a 140-minute argument about whether anything matters. It is good, and it is twenty minutes too long and too pleased with itself.

Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn as a woman who has been interrupted for thirty years. The film asks her to be a shopkeeper, a film star, a chef, a fighter and a woman with sausages where her fingers should be, and she does all of it without visible strain. What surprised us is how good she is doing nothing. The scenes across a desk from Jamie Lee Curtis’s Deirdre Beaubeirdre, a tax inspector with a bad cardigan and a worse mood, are as sharp as anything with a kick in it. Curtis plays her with a slump and a stapler and gets most of the laughs that do not involve a bodily function.

Ke Huy Quan plays Waymond, the husband who sticks googly eyes on the laundry bags and is carrying divorce papers he cannot hand over. Quan plays gentleness as something Waymond has chosen, and the film’s whole case rests on him. There is a speech late on, which we will not quote, about why he is kind. We were not ready for it. Not long before, the film had shown us a fight conducted with a sex toy; then Quan spoke quietly to his wife across a room and we found we had stopped breathing. Stephanie Hsu has the harder double, sullen Joy and Jobu Tupaki, a being in a sequinned Elvis suit who has seen every universe and found them all dull, and she is best when you can see one inside the other. James Hong, as the grandfather Gong Gong, needs about four lines.

Larkin Seiple lights the laundrette in flat fluorescent and gives every other world its own look: a film-star universe of rain, neon and cigarette smoke; a universe that is nothing but sky and two boulders. Jason Kisvarday’s production design is strongest at the shabby end, in the Wangs’ flat above the shop, where every surface holds a receipt. Shirley Kurata puts Jobu in a new costume every time she appears, each sillier than the last, and the joke holds. The score by Ryan Lott, Rafiq Bhatia and Ian Chang is nervous electronics with a lullaby underneath, and it knows when to shut up.

Paul Rogers cuts the jumps between universes so fast and so cleanly that we always knew where Evelyn was and what she had just borrowed, a real feat. Then the film does it again. And again. Once the rules have been explained they are explained a second time, each fight has roughly the same shape, and the humour visits the lavatory more often than it needs to. We laughed at the hot-dog fingers. By the third or fourth visit to that universe we were aware of the runtime, and by the finale, when the characters say the lesson out loud several times over, we were annoyed on the film’s behalf. Two rocks in a canyon had already said it, in silence, and said it better.

Most critics have been warmer than we are, and a few called it the most inventive science fiction since [*The Matrix*](https://film.one/film/the-matrix). That film knew when it had finished. This one is still the only recent multiverse picture to treat the idea as more than a licence for cameos, and it would be better at two hours.

See it with someone you have been meaning to talk to properly, and sit through the sausage fingers; the best part is a man with a bum bag asking everyone to be kinder.

*Fi1m score 77, published 20 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics are won over, and the reviews agree on why. Twenty of the twenty-two are positive, and nearly all of them put Michelle Yeoh’s lead performance first: her range across the film’s many variants is what holds the multiverse together. The second cluster of praise is the family story underneath the chaos, with the mother-daughter relationship and Ke Huy Quan’s supporting turn singled out as the emotional anchor. The action and effects draw comparisons to The Matrix from several reviews.

The reservations are about volume. Several positive reviews think it runs long; Vulture puts the excess at 15 to 20 per cent, and The Times finds a saggy midsection with too much fighting. Radio Times notes some puerile humour. The spread is narrow apart from two outright dissents: The Hollywood Reporter thinks the nonstop overload costs it control and feeling, and The New Yorker finds only bland life lessons and sophomoric jokes.

### Reviews we read (22)

- **Slant Magazine**, Derek Smith (4/4): The film works magic by embracing excess and finding harmony within it, with inventive action and a coherent emotional core about family and connection in an overstimulated world. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-review-daniels-michelle-yeoh/)
- **Empire**, Ben Travis (95/100, inferred): The film is a thunderously cinematic, radical work of wild invention and emotional depth that balances multiversal mayhem with a heartfelt family story. The critic singles out the brilliant performances, especially Michelle Yeoh's range across variants and the way the film tugs on familial threads amid the chaos. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/everything-everywhere-all-at-once/)
- **IndieWire**, David Ehrlich (A): Michelle Yeoh gives the performance of her career in this orgiastic, instant-classic martial-arts multiverse adventure from the Daniels that mixes The Matrix with wild inventiveness. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-review-1234707051/)
- **Financial Times**, Danny Leigh (★★★★☆): The critic describes the film as wildly ambitious and furiously original, an instant cult darling mixing martial arts, existential panic and human connection. Droll homages and the experience of watching it in a cinema are singled out for praise. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/df24772e-0c4a-4d1e-9df7-b50f38c01038)
- **Sight and Sound** (90/100, inferred): The Daniels’ hyper-inventive film presents life as a fathomless multiverse through dazzlingly bizarre imagination and tonal shifts. Yeoh and Hsu’s dynamic anchors the core family story amid the multiverse chaos. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/everything-everywhere-all-once-shows-life-fathomless-multiverse)
- **The Times**, Kevin Maher (★★★★☆): The critic calls the film magnificent and the most innovative sci-fi since The Matrix, praising its propulsive high-kicking innovation and pop-cultural stew. A saggy midsection with too much fighting is noted as a flaw. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-film-review-h5cz5f6xg)
- **Total Film** (85/100, inferred): The Daniels' follow-up is a head trip and riot that thrives in the push-pull between off-the-charts excess and grounding humanity. The critic singles out the exquisite performances by the leads, particularly Michelle Yeoh's charismatic range and emotional sucker-punch reflections on family. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-review/)
- **Vulture**, Alison Willmore (85/100, inferred): The film approaches a maximalist masterpiece as a moving family drama first, with a euphoric showcase for Yeoh and a poignant turn from Quan, though it is 15-20% longer than needed. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/movie-review-a24s-everything-everywhere-all-at-once.html)
- **Radio Times**, Patrick Cremona (4/5): An extremely ambitious and spectacularly original multiverse adventure that sticks far more than it misses. The emotional pull, anchored by strong performances, remains its greatest strength despite some puerile humour. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-review/)
- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the film an inventive indie sci-fi with spectacular ambitions and a tangible emotional core that stands out amid its multiverse chaos. Michelle Yeoh's kaleidoscopic lead performance is singled out for praise. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/may/15/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-review-michelle-yeoh-jamie-lee-curtis-daniel-kwan-daniel-scheinert)
- **Time Out**, Dan Jolin (4/5): The Daniels juggle silly gags and weird visuals like cackling Dadaists in this anarchic sci-fi comedy. Michelle Yeoh knocks every scene out of the park as the relatable family tribulations tether the heavy concepts. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-2022)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Justin Chang (70/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as exactly that—funny, messy, moving and exasperating—singling out Michelle Yeoh’s megawatt performance as its coherent purpose and dazzling showcase. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-03-24/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-review-michelle-yeoh)
- **The New York Times**, A.O. Scott (Critic’s Pick): The critic calls the film messy and glorious, praising how its antic multiverse cleverness serves a sincere heart as a bittersweet domestic drama of immigrant striving and mother-daughter love. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/movies/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-review.html)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney (30/100, inferred): The film is insanely imaginative and often fun as a frenetic multiverse adventure, but its nonstop chaotic overload sacrifices control and emotional poignancy, feeling like hollow flashiness at times. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-sxsw-2022-1235108278/)
- **The New Yorker**, Richard Brody (20/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a failed fantasy and vapor puff of corporatized fantasy despite the cast, complaining that it lacks physicality and offers only bland life lessons and sophomoric humor. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-reviewed-theres-no-there-there)
- **Den of Geek**, David Crow (5/5): The critic calls the film one of the most wildly creative and ambitious genre movies in years, praising its kaleidoscopic multiverse vision and humanist core. Yeoh's lead performance anchors the inventive, gonzo elements from the Daniels. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-best-multiverse-movie/)
- **/Film**, Jacob Hall (10/10): The critic hails it as the best American movie in years, a mind-melting masterpiece that mixes humor, action, and profound exploration of depression and kindness in the face of nihilism. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/796646/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-review-chaos-and-kindness-collide-in-a-mind-melting-masterpiece-sxsw/)
- **Collider**, Ross Bonaime (A-): The critic praises the film's ambitious, chaotic multiverse storytelling and strong performances, especially from Michelle Yeoh, calling it one of the most brilliant films in recent years. They single out the blend of absurdity and emotional depth about life's choices. [Read](https://collider.com/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-review-michelle-yeoh-daniels/)
- **Film Stories**, John Moore (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it a triumph, praising Michelle Yeoh's masterclass performance as the emotional anchor in the chaotic multiverse adventure, and highlighting the film's blend of humor, action, and insightful commentary on life and family. [Read](https://filmstories.co.uk/reviews/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-review-a-triumph-and-michelle-yeoh-gold/)
- **Polygon**, Tasha Robinson (90/100, inferred): The critic hails it as a multiversal masterpiece with game-changing effects and ambition rivaling The Matrix, praising its mix of vulgar humor, humanistic messages, and focus on personal growth amid chaos. They single out the inventive action sequences and emotional core. [Read](https://www.polygon.com/reviews/23006000/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-review/)
- **The Wrap**, Robert Abele (85/100, inferred): The review lauds the film's chaotic yet heartfelt blend of sci-fi, action, and family drama, crediting Michelle Yeoh's magnetic performance and the directors' ability to balance absurdity with emotional depth. It singles out the inventive multiverse concepts and the way the film embraces life's messiness. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-film-review-michelle-yeoh-jamie-lee-curtis/)
- **Deadline**, Valerie Complex (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's wild, multiverse-spanning adventure as an emotionally mature family drama that uses its sci-fi elements to explore love and togetherness, highlighting Michelle Yeoh's standout performance. They single out the strong cast and the directors' powerful storytelling for creating a fun, emotionally engaging ride. [Read](https://deadline.com/2022/03/sxsw-review-everything-everywhere-1234974631/)

## Details

- **Director:** Daniel Scheinert, Dan Kwan
- **Director:** Daniel Scheinert, Dan Kwan
- **Writer:** Daniel Scheinert, Dan Kwan
- **Cinematography:** Larkin Seiple
- **Editor:** Paul Rogers
- **Music:** Ryan Lott, Ian Chang, Rafiq Bhatia
- **Production design:** Jason Kisvarday
- **Costume design:** Shirley Kurata
- **Producer:** Mike Larocca, Daniel Scheinert, Tim Headington
- **Cast:** Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang; Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang / Jobu Tupaki; Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang; James Hong as Gong Gong; Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdre; Tallie Medel as Becky Sregor; Jenny Slate as Big Nose; Harry Shum Jr. as Chad
- **Runtime:** 2h 20m
- **Certificate (MPA):** R
- **Release (the US):** 8 April 2022
- **Genres:** Action, Adventure, Science Fiction
- **Also in:** [Best Picture winners](https://film.one/collections/oscar-best-picture.md) (Winner, 2022); [BAFTA Best Film winners](https://film.one/collections/bafta-best-film.md) (Nominee, 2022); [Golden Globe Best Musical or Comedy winners](https://film.one/collections/golden-globe-comedy.md) (Nominee, 2022)
- **Budget:** $25 million
- **Box office:** $139 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxN1T1uxQ2g

## Where to watch in the US

- Hulu: streaming, uhd
- The Roku Channel: free, hd, leaving 2026-10-01
- Disney+: add-on, uhd
- Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, sd
- Apple TV: rent $4.99, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $19.99, uhd
- Apple TV: buy $19.99, hd

*Checked 2026-09-20.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HU, ID, IE, IT, JP, KR, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PL, PT, SE, SG, TH, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 2023: Best Picture (won); Best Writing, Original Screenplay (won)
- Golden Globes 2023: Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (nominated)
- Hugo Awards 2023: Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form (won)
- Amanda Award for Best Foreign Feature Film 2022: Amanda Award for Best Foreign Feature Film (won)
- Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Film 2022: Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Film (won)
- Dorian Award for Film of the Year 2022: Dorian Award for Film of the Year (won)
- Dorian Award for LGBTQ Film of the Year 2022: Dorian Award for LGBTQ Film of the Year (won)
- SAG Awards 2022: Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (won)

## If you liked this

- *Swiss Army Man* (2016), Fi1m 75: The same directors, one corpse, far fewer universes, the same soft heart underneath. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/swiss-army-man.md)
- *Being John Malkovich* (1999), Fi1m 89: Another head-first plunge into other lives, with a puppeteer instead of a laundrette. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/being-john-malkovich.md)
- *Run Lola Run* (1998), Fi1m 82: Berlin, twenty minutes, three versions of the same dash; the original what-if sprint. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/run-lola-run.md)
- *The Farewell* (2019), Fi1m 84: A Chinese-American family keeps a secret from grandmother, and nobody kicks anyone. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-farewell.md)
- *Kung Fu Hustle* (2004): Stephen Chow’s martial-arts cartoon, where the fighting is silly and the timing is exact.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/everything-everywhere-all-at-once