Is "Everything Everywhere All At Once" Missing Something?

The film makes big claims and hints at even bigger ideas – but at the end of it all, is there any there there?

Everything Everywhere All At Once is a film that does its damnedest to live up to the title. It comes pretty close; no one can accuse the film of skimping on runtime, and it is so visually packed with seemingly everything that you sometimes wish the eye could take in everywhere on the screen all at once. And if taken metaphorically (like the Bible, this film is more rewarding when not taken literally), Everything Everywhere is a film that wants to address the everything and the everywhere of existence.

How do you describe a film like Everything Everywhere? In the most straightforward telling of the film, it is about a Chinese-American family whose matriarch (our protagonist, Evelyn) manages a worn-out laundromat, attempts to keep the IRS off her back, is oblivious to the fact that her loving but long-neglected husband wants a divorce, and struggles to connect with her nihilistically depressed daughter. Into this chaos comes the discovery that all-out war has been waging across the mult…