Jan 6, 2023Liked by Matt Levy's Comedy Stray Notes
Copying and pasting from an email sent to you on October 4 (turns out I didn't totally dislike the film!):
I finally saw Everything Everywhere All at Once, but alas I was mixed. I liked it though, actually more than I thought I would. Definitely the most overrated movie I’ve seen all year though, possibly even of the past decade. The filmmaking is excellent, as is some of the writing, notably the gag construction. And yet…eh? I felt similarly here as I did to Swiss Army Man, though I liked this much more. Here’s what I wrote about Swiss Army Man (was going to abbreviate it but didn’t like the abbreviation) after seeing it in October 2016: “Brilliant work but really boring movie nonetheless. Didn't care at all, didn't laugh, hated it.” (A masterpiece of a review.) For EEAAO I would amend it to something like “Brilliant work but not that interesting. Only marginally cared about what was happening, had some really good chuckles though. Surprisingly didn’t hate it.” It’s basically 80% an SNL sketch version of The Matrix, and it is a top notch version of that, and 20% a Sundance immigrant dramedy, and it is a pretty good version of that, but the two don’t come together in any meaningful way so as to give dramatic stakes to the absurdity. I never cared about most of what was happening, and the emotional connections between the main alternate universe conflict (centered around a daughter who got the full on hardcore tiger mom treatment and was forced to study so hard that she wanted to destroy the world) and the main universe (where the mother-daughter conflict is pretty chill, like she’s totally cool with her daughter having a girlfriend but just didn’t feel like telling old Chinese grandpa about it, and not telling him is obviously the right choice too) was totally flimsy. I’m really shocked hearing about people who had an emotional response to this movie, it’s utterly bizarre. I liked all of the “real world” conflicts and the characters, but once we got out of that world it all just felt pointless. There was no strong dramatic throughline. The alternate universes gave the film the opportunity to explore the missed opportunities in Yeoh’s character’s life, but that’s not even the focus of the movie, and I never got a sense that she was even dissatisfied with her life’s direction, more just that she was stressed at that time. The teenage girl is a normal teenage girl, and actually seemed pretty emotionally stable. The dad is the one whose life evidently did not go how he wanted, and that’s the character we learn the least about though it would have been more interesting to explore more there. All in all, the real world stuff was all well done but underexplored, and then there wasn’t enough connective tissue with the rest of the film. Yes, there were a lot of great gags, they even got me out of my grumpy dissatisfaction with the movie (“This movie is kinda lame, there are no stakes to any of this, how did all of the film nerds fall for this bullsh— bwahahaha okay that was pretty funny”). But I was never engaged, always watching from a distance. It almost felt like being treated to a compilation of two hour and 20 minutes of the funniest Super Bowl commercials of the past few decades, one after another, with a plot thinly connecting them all. I kept thinking maybe if this came out 10-20 years ago I would have felt it was brilliant and been more able to appreciate the combination of inspired zaniness combined with exquisite technical craft, but we’re at the point where everything has been done and it feels impossible to get by on craft alone. The Daniels are clearly ridiculously talented (and the fact that they made the movie for so cheap makes me call bullshit on all of the filmmakers complaining they can’t get their original ideas financed, obviously they just have no idea how to maximize a budget), and I’ll likely show up for their next movie. But this really just made me wish I was in an alternate universe watching one of Michelle Yeoh’s classic Hong Kong films.
Hey, this is tough but fair. The fact that you recognize the movie is technically brilliant, very funny and at times moving, is a step in the right direction toward just an outright rejection of a pretty terrific movie. What you said about the mother-daughter relationship in the above interested me most though. Intentional or not, maybe conflicts seem more inflated internally (or the alternate universes for this movie's sake) than how they manifest in the real world (their muted, distant relationship IRL). Food for thought for me AND might make the movie feel less pointless to you.
I think the idea that we emotionally inflate minor conflicts totally works on an intellectual level, and that's interesting and isn't something I thought of, but that doesn't change the fact that I felt disconnected from the film and didn't care about anything that was happening. But whatever, you and many others evidently did have greater emotional involvement, and I am happy for you all and do not wish to talk you out of it!
"who can dislike that instant classic?"
Me.
I respect your hot take here. It’s bold. What didn’t work for you?
Copying and pasting from an email sent to you on October 4 (turns out I didn't totally dislike the film!):
I finally saw Everything Everywhere All at Once, but alas I was mixed. I liked it though, actually more than I thought I would. Definitely the most overrated movie I’ve seen all year though, possibly even of the past decade. The filmmaking is excellent, as is some of the writing, notably the gag construction. And yet…eh? I felt similarly here as I did to Swiss Army Man, though I liked this much more. Here’s what I wrote about Swiss Army Man (was going to abbreviate it but didn’t like the abbreviation) after seeing it in October 2016: “Brilliant work but really boring movie nonetheless. Didn't care at all, didn't laugh, hated it.” (A masterpiece of a review.) For EEAAO I would amend it to something like “Brilliant work but not that interesting. Only marginally cared about what was happening, had some really good chuckles though. Surprisingly didn’t hate it.” It’s basically 80% an SNL sketch version of The Matrix, and it is a top notch version of that, and 20% a Sundance immigrant dramedy, and it is a pretty good version of that, but the two don’t come together in any meaningful way so as to give dramatic stakes to the absurdity. I never cared about most of what was happening, and the emotional connections between the main alternate universe conflict (centered around a daughter who got the full on hardcore tiger mom treatment and was forced to study so hard that she wanted to destroy the world) and the main universe (where the mother-daughter conflict is pretty chill, like she’s totally cool with her daughter having a girlfriend but just didn’t feel like telling old Chinese grandpa about it, and not telling him is obviously the right choice too) was totally flimsy. I’m really shocked hearing about people who had an emotional response to this movie, it’s utterly bizarre. I liked all of the “real world” conflicts and the characters, but once we got out of that world it all just felt pointless. There was no strong dramatic throughline. The alternate universes gave the film the opportunity to explore the missed opportunities in Yeoh’s character’s life, but that’s not even the focus of the movie, and I never got a sense that she was even dissatisfied with her life’s direction, more just that she was stressed at that time. The teenage girl is a normal teenage girl, and actually seemed pretty emotionally stable. The dad is the one whose life evidently did not go how he wanted, and that’s the character we learn the least about though it would have been more interesting to explore more there. All in all, the real world stuff was all well done but underexplored, and then there wasn’t enough connective tissue with the rest of the film. Yes, there were a lot of great gags, they even got me out of my grumpy dissatisfaction with the movie (“This movie is kinda lame, there are no stakes to any of this, how did all of the film nerds fall for this bullsh— bwahahaha okay that was pretty funny”). But I was never engaged, always watching from a distance. It almost felt like being treated to a compilation of two hour and 20 minutes of the funniest Super Bowl commercials of the past few decades, one after another, with a plot thinly connecting them all. I kept thinking maybe if this came out 10-20 years ago I would have felt it was brilliant and been more able to appreciate the combination of inspired zaniness combined with exquisite technical craft, but we’re at the point where everything has been done and it feels impossible to get by on craft alone. The Daniels are clearly ridiculously talented (and the fact that they made the movie for so cheap makes me call bullshit on all of the filmmakers complaining they can’t get their original ideas financed, obviously they just have no idea how to maximize a budget), and I’ll likely show up for their next movie. But this really just made me wish I was in an alternate universe watching one of Michelle Yeoh’s classic Hong Kong films.
Hey, this is tough but fair. The fact that you recognize the movie is technically brilliant, very funny and at times moving, is a step in the right direction toward just an outright rejection of a pretty terrific movie. What you said about the mother-daughter relationship in the above interested me most though. Intentional or not, maybe conflicts seem more inflated internally (or the alternate universes for this movie's sake) than how they manifest in the real world (their muted, distant relationship IRL). Food for thought for me AND might make the movie feel less pointless to you.
I think the idea that we emotionally inflate minor conflicts totally works on an intellectual level, and that's interesting and isn't something I thought of, but that doesn't change the fact that I felt disconnected from the film and didn't care about anything that was happening. But whatever, you and many others evidently did have greater emotional involvement, and I am happy for you all and do not wish to talk you out of it!