Everything Everywhere All at Once
2022 · Directed by Daniel Scheinert
Woke Score
CriticCritic Score
Audience
Woke
Critics rated this 19 points above its woke score. Among Woke films, this critic score ranks #27 of 88.
Representation Casting
Score: 95/100
Predominantly Asian cast in leading and supporting roles with Michelle Yeoh as the central protagonist, Ke Huy Quan in a major comedic role, and James Hong in a significant part. This represents a substantial departure from Hollywood's historical casting patterns.
LGBTQ+ Themes
Score: 65/100
Stephanie Hsu's character is in a same-sex relationship and the film centers partly on a mother's journey toward acceptance of her lesbian daughter. However, the queer elements are treated as one narrative thread among many rather than emphasized explicitly.
Feminist Agenda
Score: 60/100
The film centers on a female protagonist navigating agency and power across multiple universes, but does not explicitly engage with feminist theory or make gender dynamics a primary thematic focus. The female characters are active and capable.
Racial Consciousness
Score: 75/100
The film features Chinese immigrant characters and their experiences, with cultural elements woven throughout. However, it does not explicitly foreground racial politics or systemic racism as central concerns, treating the immigrant experience more as narrative context.
Climate Crusade
Score: 0/100
No evidence of climate-related themes, activism, or environmental consciousness in the film's narrative or visual language.
Eat the Rich
Score: 30/100
The film includes some critique of consumer culture and capitalist values through its setting in a laundromat and through certain visual gags, but these elements are incidental rather than central to the film's thematic concerns.
Body Positivity
Score: 45/100
The film features Jamie Lee Curtis in a role that does not conform to conventional beauty standards, and there are moments of body-related comedy. However, body positivity is not an explicit or developed thematic element.
Neurodivergence
Score: 0/100
No evidence of neurodivergent representation or themes related to autism, ADHD, or other neurodevelopmental conditions in the film.
Revisionist History
Score: 0/100
The film does not engage in revisionist history or attempt to reframe historical events. It is set primarily in contemporary times across multiple fictional universes.
Lecture Energy
Score: 20/100
The film prioritizes narrative chaos and visual spectacle over preachy messaging. While it contains progressive themes, it does not lecture the audience about them, maintaining an irreverent and playful tone throughout.
Synopsis
An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save what's important to her by connecting with the lives she could have led in other universes.
Consciousness Assessment
Everything Everywhere All at Once arrives as the sort of film that makes serious critics reach for their dictionaries to ensure they are using the word "unprecedented" correctly. It is, in many ways, precisely what contemporary progressive sensibilities imagine cinema could be: a sprawling multiverse adventure centered on an aging Chinese immigrant woman, featuring a predominantly Asian cast in heroic and comedic roles, with a daughter character whose same-sex relationship is treated as incidental to the larger narrative of familial acceptance. Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and James Hong occupy the frame with the ease of actors who have waited decades for such opportunities, and the film's commercial and critical success feels like a vindication of something that should have been obvious all along.
Yet the film's relationship to contemporary social consciousness operates at a remove from the more familiar machinery of modern progressive cinema. The representation here does not announce itself or demand recognition for its own existence. Stephanie Hsu's character is queer, yes, and her girlfriend is present in the narrative, but the film treats this as one thread among many rather than as a thesis statement. The central conflict concerns a mother's inability to accept her daughter's choices and identity, but the film's resolution emphasizes understanding and love rather than ideological correction. This is not to say the film lacks progressive sensibility, only that it wears its progressive elements lightly, integrated into a story about family and regret rather than deployed as an explicit argument.
The film's visual maximalism and narrative chaos work against the kind of preachy lecture energy that marks more overtly message-driven cinema. If anything, the film's greatest weakness from a certain critical perspective is its refusal to linger on the social and political implications of its own casting and storytelling choices. It simply proceeds as if an Asian-led action film centered on immigrant family dynamics is the most natural thing in the world, which, from a certain angle, is either the film's most sophisticated move or its most evasive one.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Critic Reviews
“Here is an orgiastic work of slaphappy genius that doesn’t operate like a narrative film so much as a particle accelerator — or maybe a cosmic washing machine — that two psychotic 12-year-olds designed in the hopes of reconciling the anxiety of what our lives could be with the beauty of what they are. ”
“It's impossible to describe. It's unlike anything you've ever seen. It's the best American movie in years, and certainly the best movie to hit theaters since the pandemic began.”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once is a complex film that encompasses a variety of subjects, but it does justice to each of them with a carefully written script, marvelous performances, and a healthy dose of bizarre humor to counter its bleak story. Michelle Yeoh in particular gives a powerhouse performance in a story that puts a fresh, welcome spin on the idea of the multiverse.”
“This mad succession of consequence-free events, trains of activity which get cancelled by a switch to another parallel world, means that nothing is actually at stake, and the film becomes a formless splurge of Nothing Nowhere Over a Long Period of Time.”
Consciousness Markers
Predominantly Asian cast in leading and supporting roles with Michelle Yeoh as the central protagonist, Ke Huy Quan in a major comedic role, and James Hong in a significant part. This represents a substantial departure from Hollywood's historical casting patterns.
Stephanie Hsu's character is in a same-sex relationship and the film centers partly on a mother's journey toward acceptance of her lesbian daughter. However, the queer elements are treated as one narrative thread among many rather than emphasized explicitly.
The film centers on a female protagonist navigating agency and power across multiple universes, but does not explicitly engage with feminist theory or make gender dynamics a primary thematic focus. The female characters are active and capable.
The film features Chinese immigrant characters and their experiences, with cultural elements woven throughout. However, it does not explicitly foreground racial politics or systemic racism as central concerns, treating the immigrant experience more as narrative context.
No evidence of climate-related themes, activism, or environmental consciousness in the film's narrative or visual language.
The film includes some critique of consumer culture and capitalist values through its setting in a laundromat and through certain visual gags, but these elements are incidental rather than central to the film's thematic concerns.
The film features Jamie Lee Curtis in a role that does not conform to conventional beauty standards, and there are moments of body-related comedy. However, body positivity is not an explicit or developed thematic element.
No evidence of neurodivergent representation or themes related to autism, ADHD, or other neurodevelopmental conditions in the film.
The film does not engage in revisionist history or attempt to reframe historical events. It is set primarily in contemporary times across multiple fictional universes.
The film prioritizes narrative chaos and visual spectacle over preachy messaging. While it contains progressive themes, it does not lecture the audience about them, maintaining an irreverent and playful tone throughout.