Daniels – Memphis Flyer

In this reality, from Rick and Morty to Doctor Strange, the multiverse is having a moment. Written and directed by Daniels, the team of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, who begins the story at the end of her rope. She is a Chinese American who runs a little laundromat with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). She’s having a hard time accepting that her teenage daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) has a girlfriend (Tallie Medel), and now that her father (James Hong) is visiting from China, Evelyn is desperate to keep the truth about her daughter’s sexuality from him. Her passive-aggressive machinations manage to alienate both her daughter and father. As if that’s not stressful enough, the laundry is getting audited by the IRS, and no-nonsense agent Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis) is not happy with Evelyn’s tax deductions. Why would a laundry need a karaoke machine? It’s for Evelyn’s singing career, she says. What singing career? “She confuses her hobbies with business,” explains Waymond.

Somehow, that’s the worst cut of them all. Evelyn came to America with big dreams, but nothing turned out how she planned. And things are about to get worse once Waymond serves her with the divorce papers he’s had drawn up.

For Evelyn, it’s increasingly hard to focus on her downward spiral because she’s been secretly contacted by a Waymond from an alternate universe. There, he’s married to a version of Evelyn who invented technology to travel through the multiverse — or at least, he used to be before she was killed by a mysterious figure named Jobu Tupaki. The fashion-forward temporal villain is creating a doomsday device to destroy the multiverse. Waymond thinks this Evelyn can defeat Jobu, even though many other versions have failed, because she is living the worst possible version of her life and remains full of potential.

Daniels have crafted a tour de force of pop surrealism on a budget that wouldn’t cover Avengers: Endgame’s catering bill. Yeoh plays dozens of different versions of her character, some of which reference movie roles from her storied career. The “perfect” version of Evelyn, which Jobu teases her with, The Last Temptation of Christ-style, looks a lot like Michelle Yeoh’s real life: She’s an acclaimed actress attending the red carpet premiere of Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Jamie Lee Curtis flexes her considerable comedic talent as several versions of the cranky IRS agent — at one point, she stalks Evelyn with a machete, just as Michael Myers stalked her in Halloween. The great James Hong, who has appeared in 450 films in his 93 years, is razor-sharp, differentiating different versions of Gong Gong (Chinese for “grandpa”) with both subtle expressions and a mechanized battle wheelchair. Ke Huy Quan, who played Indiana Jones’ sidekick Short Round, returns to the screen after a 20-year absence and absolutely slays, switching from dweebish failed husband to swashbuckling time warrior, often in mid-sentence.

The story is witty and inventively structured, but it never cracks under the weight of self-reference. The random acts the reality-travelers have to perform to tilt the quantum probabilities make for some great visual comedy, especially during a wild, Hong Kong-inspired fight sequence inside the IRS building. Daniels don’t shy away from the philosophical implications of the multiverse, although they explicitly reject Rick and Morty-style nihilism in favor of a more Candide approach. Since the roads not taken are unknowable, who’s to say we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds?

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Swiss Army Man hits theaters with quite an advance buzz. Vanity Fair said it could be the strangest movie in the history of the Sundance Film Festival. I can’t say if that’s the case or not, but it’s certainly in the running.

The film was written and directed by Daniel Scheinert and Dan Kwan, collectively known as Daniels. The duo of Daniels created the video for DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s megahit “Turn Down for What,” which is one of the most demented dance videos since Spike Jonze sent Christopher Walken flying through the air for Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice.” But if that’s not enough Daniels for you, the film stars another one. Yes, that’s Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, as Manny, the titular corpse whose advancing state of decomposition imbues him with strange powers.

The most senior member of the creative team not named Daniel, Paul Dano, is the other half of this epic two-hander. He stars as Hank, an everyman stranded on an unnamed Pacific island. The opening images of various bits of trash Hank has sent floating into the sea with messages like “HELP ME” lead straight into a shot of the castaway fitting his neck into a makeshift noose. It’s a brilliant little bit of visual storytelling that condenses a whole story of hope and desperation into a few seconds. Just as Hank is about to step off into oblivion, he sees Manny wash up on the shore. Thinking his rescue is at hand, Hank narrowly avoids strangling himself, only to find that his would-be savior is not only dead, but also posthumously flatulent. But Hank quickly discovers that Manny is so supernaturally flatulent that he is able to propel himself through the water, and thus does the guy who played Brian Wilson ride the corpse of the guy who played Harry Potter like a fart-powered jet ski to freedom.

Daniel Radcliff (left) and Paul Dano in a film about farts and friendship

Or so he thinks. Just getting to the mainland doesn’t solve Hank’s castaway problem. Now he’s lost in the coastal rainforest of the Pacific Northwest, with nothing but a stiff for company. But Manny turns out to be a most versatile corpse, and when Hank the castaway starts talking to him out of desperation for human companionship, Manny eventually starts responding. Having hit the functional edge of their concept, Daniels turn Swiss Army Man into a kind of Man From Mars story. Manny has no memory of his life, but he has a lot of questions, which forces Hank to try to explain concepts like love and home and bus fare. Thus, the suicidal castaway and the flatulent dead guy regain the will to live together, and along the way figure out a kind of philosophy.

Hank’s arc is something akin to Tom Hanks’ travel from despair to joie de vivre in the 1990 cult classic Joe Versus the Volcano, and Hank’s habit of creating little worlds out of trash is very Michel Gondry. Swiss Army Man is a worthy successor to the great works of 21st-century surrealist quirk like Being John Malkovich. What at first seems like a premise that’s just strange for the sake of being strange opens up into a wider exploration of what it means to be alive, punctuated with fart jokes. Swiss Army Man is not quite an allegory, but it’s at least a rich, thoughtful film that shows what comedy can be capable of.