Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic

I went back and looked in my social media and found that Everything Everywhere All At Once first hit my radar on February 7, 2022. I had shared the trailer on Facebook and wrote, “This looks amazeballs.” According to my Letterboxd diary, I saw it in the movie theater on April 9 and then made a friend go see it with me again on April 23. I bought the 4K disc as soon as I could and watched it again when it came out in June. Now, I get the honor of sharing why I think it should win the Academy Award this Sunday for Best Picture.

I fell hard for this movie. I said after my first viewing that it was the leader in the clubhouse for me for the best movie of 2022. It hit me in all the right places. It was funny, energetic, inventive, zany, and had heart to go along with its twisted sense of humor. It dazzled. It flew at a breakneck speed at times and had a complex plot but gave you enough to follow along even if you couldn’t follow everything entirely the first time through.

At the time, I hoped it would garner a few Oscar nominations. So often though, movies that get released earlier in the year tend to be forgotten by the Academy voters when award season rolls around, so I tempered my hopes just a bit. But something happened with this charming, weird film. It caught on like wildfire.

It became one of the highest rated and best reviewed movies on Letterboxd, the “GoodReads of movies.” It became the highest grossing box office movie for A24, a distributor known for critical acclaim but not so much for commercial success, eclipsing the $100 million mark in total box office (domestic + international).

The word of mouth continued to spread throughout the year and build momentum, to the point where a Best Picture nomination seemed like a foregone conclusion. And somewhere along the way, it became the frontrunner in the race for Best Picture.

Yes, a movie that hops around through a multiverse that Marvel could only hope to emulate, that prominently features an IRS Employee of the Month award in the form of a butt plug, that has an extended sequence where two rocks stare out across a canyon and talk to each other in subtitles, that has a doomsday device in the form of an everything bagel, that lampoons Ratatouille, that has one universe that is a love letter to the lushness of Wong Kar-wai, and another universe where everyone has hotdog fingers, that movie is the odds on favorite to win Best Picture.

And you know what? It deserves to be.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is the total package of a movie.

It’s got top notch acting across the board, as evidenced by the four acting nominations it received in three categories, including two in Best Supporting Actress. Michelle Yeoh is neck-and-neck with Cate Blanchett in Tar to win Best Actress. Ke Huy Quan, best known as a child actor of the 80s in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, is the favorite to win Best Supporting actor.

Behind the scenes, directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert are also nominated and seem likely to win Best Director. It’s also an Oscar nominated script. And, its editing is out of this world. The amount of care and work that went into editing this film seems unparalleled.

The sequences where Yeoh’s Evelyn is careening through the multiverse and we’re seeing seemingly dozens of versions of her in a matter of seconds is nothing short of impressive and mind-blowing. Add all that up, plus what I mentioned earlier about everything in the story, and EEAAO has range.

It also has commercial success. An ever-increasing complaint about the Oscars is that the wider audience has not seen the Best Picture winners. EEAAO made $73.3 million domestically. Since Argo, which won Best Picture in 2013 and made $136 million domestically a decade ago, only Green Book, at $85.1 million) made more money at the domestic box office as a Best Picture winner.

Thus, if it wins, it will be among the most widely seen Best Picture winners of the last decade. And amongst the other nominees this year, only Avatar: The Way of Water, Elvis, and Top Gun: Maverick outgrossed EEAAO and of those three, Top Gun: Maverick seems to be the only one with a puncher’s chance of actually winning.

It has been nothing short of a banner year for Everything Everywhere All At Once, with a groundswell of grassroots support building throughout the year and culminating in not just a Best Picture nomination, but being poised to actually win it. It is easily one of the definitive movies of 2022, carrying serious buzz throughout the year, and there has actually been shockingly little backlash to it from what I can tell, because everyone is so happy for the people involved and the campaigns have been so positive.

So here’s to hoping that it’s not too weird for the Academy, and that the Daniels stick a big googly eye on their Oscar statue Sunday night. And for everyone, everywhere rooting for this wonderful movie together all at once Sunday night, just know that if the Academy breaks our hearts yet again, I wanted to say, in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.

And if it doesn’t happen, well, just be a rock!

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Why Everything Everywhere All At Once Should Be Best Picture

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