why you should watch Everything Everywhere All At Once

portraits of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known as “Daniels,” writers and directors of Everything Everywhere All at Once.

I don’t know how to describe this movie — it is just something you have to see. It’s opening this weekend in select cities. I’m still digesting it, and might write more on it later after I watch it again.

It is a movie that is basically every genre, doing each genre well, and takes viewers on a roller coaster of emotions — heartwarming and heartbreaking montages full of promise with love and new adventure, with stunning visuals, hilarious absurdity (a universe Stefon from SNL would find weird, where humans have hot dog fingers, and Claire de Lune is played with feet on the piano), kickass martial arts action, a drama dealing with themes of generational trauma of a 1st and 2nd generation Asian American family, multiverse storylines where the main characters are longing for each other’s love, the complexities of marriage, the importance of family, ideas of dreams deferred, nihilism, learning to value kindness and finding meaning in that, among other themes. I was laughing and crying during various points in the film.