I’m one of the few critics that didn’t fall in love with Everything Everywhere All At Once. It was okay, but had a lot of problems. This movie reminded me a little of that, and it felt like it tried to do a little too much of everything all at once, instead of taking out some of the elements and just making a better picture. In fact, it got so bad, my wife and I left after just over an hour of it. Once they showed us the new direction the movie would go in, we just weren’t interested in sitting through the last 45 minutes of the film.
This is the first-time feature from Nida Manzoor (We Are Lady Parts). And it’s like Jane Austen meets Crouching Tiger. And the “everything all at once” that was crammed into here include the close sisters who start to grow apart when she starts dating someone, bullies, patriarchy, karate, meeting your idol, parental disapproval, and human cloning. Yes, the tone is off for this picture with all of that. And to top it off, the jokes never work.
Ria (Priya Kansara) has a great look on screen, as the young, British-Pakistani teen who wants to be a stuntwoman, despite her teacher telling her she should become a doctor. Her older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) is a failed artist, who often gets coerced into helping Ria film her YouTube stunt videos.
When there’s a party at the ritzy mansion of a rich family, Ria is disgusted that her sister falls for the handsome bachelor, who has lots of women throwing themselves at him. He’s also a doctor, which makes the parents happy.
What was so frustrating was how everything was so over-the-top: the way the bully at school fights with Ria (without the teacher coming out into the hall until it’s too late); or how the two best friends always have quips that were meant to be funny. (Although I did kind of laugh when they dressed up like men to steal something out of a men’s locker room). Just watching the two sisters fight in their house, damaging the place…made me wonder how they didn’t get in trouble for that.
The plans to ruin the sister’s wedding to the handsome doctor just kept getting more and more implausible. At one point, when Ria tries to make nice with her sister’s future mother-in-law (after leaving a bunch of condoms all over the place to sabotage things), it makes no sense that when she tries to flee from the pedi-mani and painful waxing, the people doing it chase her around the mansion like they’re going to catch her and kill her. My wife said, “Really? Is that what they’d do?”
But really, nothing in this movie is like anything anybody would do, in any scenario. And when audiences get to the third act, I’m sure like me, they will have had enough. When I read about what happens and how badly the story goes off the rails (many of those fight scenes were shown in the trailers), I was glad I didn’t stay.
It may have its heart in the right place, but it just doesn’t work.
0 stars.