FLIGHT OF FANCY (EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE)
So imagine if Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry or Charlie Kaufman were told: "Go make a martial arts movie".
That's the kind of insanity Daniels Kwan and Scheinert are reaching for in 'Everything, Everywhere, All At Once'.
The $14.3 million movie has become an instant cult classic, earning over $100 million worldwide with its madcap mix of the multiverse, martial arts and mirth.
The film has also become an end of year favourite among many critics circles and a real awards season contender, hoovering up six Golden Globe nominations including Best Picture - Musical or a Comedy.
© A24Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn Wang, a jaded laundromat owner married to Ke Huy Quan's Waymond.
The couple are Chinese emigrants to the US whose family life has gone stale.
They have a daughter, Stephanie Hsu's Joy who is keen for her mother to approve of her non Asian girlfriend, Tallie Mendel's Becky.
The family also live with Evelyn's demanding father, James Hong's Gong Gong who she is afraid to tell that her daughter is gay.
© A24Evelyn is feeling the pressure of their business being audited by the Inland Revenue Service and, to make matters worse, Waymond is planning to divorce her.
Summoned to appear before Jamie Lee Curtis' diligent, dowdy and misanthropic auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdre, Evelyn is taken aback when her husband suddenly reveals in the IRS office's elevator that not everything is what it seems.
Momentarily possessed by the spirit of "Alpha Waymond," he discloses there are many parallel universes that they live in with new ones created all the time.
Those multiverse worlds are determined by Evelyn's life choices.
None of this, however, makes sense to Evelyn.
© A24He reveals nevertheless that there is an Alphaverse version of Evelyn that developed technology which enables people to access the best version of themselves by leaping into different multiverse worlds.
However the multiverse is under threat from Jobu Topaki, a version of Joy, who has developed her own multiverse jumping technology.
Describing it as a "everything bagel," the technology Jobu/Joy is deploying is capable of destroying reality.
With Waymond urging her to save the multiverse, Evelyn finds herself sucked into a surreal conflict with Jobu, whose minions are deployed in the IRS office.
© A24And as she accesses each multiverse strand, Evelyn discovers she is living a range of wildly different lives.
In one she is a glamorous movie star.
In another, she is a Kung Fu master - accessing those skills in the fight to stop Jobu.
But with Gong Gong's Alpha version also commanding his own army and urging her to kill Joy in her own universe in order to stop Jobu, how can Evelyn use her powers to successfully negotiate a complex and often bizarre network of multiverse worlds?
© A24Working from their own script which was developed as far back as 2010, Kwan and Scheinert conjure up one of the most hyperactive and daring movies of recent times.
'Everything, Everywhere, All At Once' fuses the Martial Arts of 'Clan of the White Lotus' with a 'Matrix'-style quest featuring a Special One tasked with disrupting the plans of a powerful supervillain.
Throw into the mix the surreal quality of 'Being John Malkovich' and 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,' laced with the violence of 'Fight Club' and you've got something approximating this film which doesn't always make sense but is breathtakingly ambitious and tremendous fun.
The Daniels, as Kwan and Scheinert are affectionately known, extract plenty of humour out of their absurdist action comedy concept.
© A24Amid all the absurdist gags lies some sharp parody.
Cineastes will love the film's joke at the expense of Brad Bird's Disney classic 'Ratatouille' which is constantly incorrectly referred to throughout the film.
There's a nod too to Wong Kar Kwai's romantic epic 'In the Mood for Love' in one of the parallel universe storylines.
Another gag specifically recalls Buster Keaton's groundbreaking silent movie comedy 'Sherlock Jr' as Evelyn shifts from location to location acquiring skills in various multiverse worlds.
© A24Quentin Tarantino fans will recognise similarities to Gordon Liu's Pai Mei in the 'Kill Bill' films and Li Jing's Kung Fu Master which in itself is a nod to 1970s and 1980s Martial Arts classics like 'Clan of the White Lotus'.
Waymond's gadgets recall one of Ke Huy Quan's best loved roles as the gadget wielding Richard "Data" Wang in 'The Goonies".
The Daniels go full meta with their lead Michelle Yeoh, riffing on two signature roles from her career - her breakthrough role in 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,' and specifically 'Crazy Rich Asians'.
The characters' adventures in the multiverse also recall the absurd, free spirited humour of Douglas Adams' 'Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy' - there's even a bizarre world where Yeoh and Curtis have huge hot dog fingers on their hands.
© A24'Everything, Everywhere, All At Once,' however, is more than just a succession of in-jokes.
Amid all the frenetic action sequences and surreal gags, it skillfully weaves in themes of inter-generational tensions, familial misunderstandings, emotional suppression and culture clashes in a way that bigger, brasher Hollywood superhero or action movies would never try.
All of this is done with superb brio.
It is frankly a joy watching Yeoh, Quan and Curtis just cutting loose and having fun with tongue in cheek comic action roles.
© A24Stephanie Hsu impresses too as Joy/Jobu.
And if that wasn't enough, there's a wonderfully quirky soundtrack featuring David Byrne, Randy Newman and Andre 3000.
Every once in a while a small film comes along and punches above its weight through sheer ingenuity.
'Everything, Everywhere, All At Once' is that kind of movie.
© A24It's an exhausting watch but it is so eccentric that you will find yourself wishing to revisit it again and again.
Having caught Hollywood by surprise with its box office success, can it go all the way to Oscar glory?
Perhaps but its awards season momentum could well be determined by how the Daniels, Yeoh, Quan and Curtis fare at the Golden Globes.
Regardless of that, 'Everything, Everywhere, All At Once' has already exceeded expectations and it will undoubtedly be a cult movie for many years to come.
('Everything, Everywhere, All At Once' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on May 13, 2022)
Just one correction: it should be "Internal Revenue Service" and not "Inland Revenue Service."
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