Among the infinite multiverse, we happen to live in a timeline where it was decided to make a film that is both attractive and repellant, which cannot be dismissed, because it is brilliant, but cannot be recommended, because it is ugly and absurd.
If I may indulge in excessive understatement, this film is difficult to assess.
Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (2022) is an absurdist science fiction action-comedy, directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.
It is funny, but also bitter. It is deep, but dark. Not for children.
Would that I lived in the nearby parallel timeline, one perhaps not far away, where only a few images, lines, or plot points were only slightly different, this film would have a strong recommendation from me.
As it is, I can only recommend it to viewers with a different sense of taste or sense of decency from my own: but those viewers, I can assure you, will enjoy this film as a masterpiece and triumph, because the film actually is moving, wildly original, and deep.
If you are like me, however, you might enjoy it if you overlook the way it looks, if you overlook the uncritical affirmation of sexual deviance as a norm, and if you can ignore several of the grotesque excesses, including trouserless men with pixelated rumps sodomizing themselves with phallic desk ornaments during a fight scene, played for laughs.
And, if you are like me, you will think the depth does not go deep enough to make up for this gross unsightliness.
More than wildly original, this film is insanely original, if not just insane. If you can find yourself in sympathy with the insanity, you will enjoy this film tremendously; if not, you will be confused, perhaps offended.
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