This movie wants to "stop making sense"

 

     Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert -- a directing duo known as The Daniels -- overwhelm the screen with the aptly titled Everything Everywhere All at Once, a movie that spends more than two hours racing through a multiverse in which characters suddenly morph into alternate versions of themselves. 

     It's impossible to watch the Daniels maneuver through the chaos without acknowledging their ability to crack visual jokes, rip through dense helpings of exposition, and commit to a full-scale creative bombardment of the audience. 

     Now, it should be said that there are people who will enjoy this teeming barrage of a movie precisely because the Daniels don't skimp on invention. But those who don't think that comprehension and creativity are mortal enemies may find themselves looking for guard rails.

     No stranger to martial arts action, Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn, a Chinese immigrant to the US who runs a laundromat with her husband (Ke Huy Quan). Quan, you may remember, appeared in The Goonies as a kid. 

     Mired in a listless marriage, the exasperated Evelyn tries to deal with a lesbian daughter (Stephanie Hsu) who, in one of the movie's alternate universes, assumes an entirely different identity.

    If you see the film, keep an eye out for a character named Jobu Tupaki. Also watch for the giant everything bagel.

     No, I'm not kidding, although the Daniels probably are — at least I hope so.

     The Daniels seem to have dedicated themselves to the idea that quiet equals boredom. Blink and you'll be watching a fight scene in which Quan's Waymond turns a fanny pack into a weapon. 

     During a scene in a tax office, Waymond reveals a new side of himself, providing Evelyn with instruction about how to "jump" from her current life into a parallel one in which she's a martial arts maven with a mission. She’ll find additional identities as the movie barrels forward, including a stint as a movie star.

    To further complicate matters Evelyn's visiting father (James Hong) never approved of her marriage to the feckless Waymond.

      Other characters pop in and out of various universes. Damn the transitions, it's full speed ahead. 

      Sporting a puffy paunch, Jamie Lee Curtis turns herself into a sight gag; she plays a dictatorial tax auditor who's appalled by Evelyn's haphazard record keeping. 

    The Daniels (Swiss Army Knife) convert distraction into attraction -- or at least they try. In one alternate universe, the characters have hotdogs for fingers, for example. In another, Evelyn and Joy turn up as rocks. 

    And, yes, it does feel as if everything we're seeing is happening all at once. Serious issues morph into cartoon-like jests. Sure lines blur but don’t we all live in a state of disorientation? So what if the movie’s scenes play like an explosion of hyperactive production numbers?

    Everything Everywhere All at Once will delight some and confound others as it offers a cafeteria-style variety of pleasures: a terrific costume here, a funny bit there, an ingenious fight in another place.

     All frantic all the time, the movie gallops toward a conciliatory -- and I guess -- happy hug of an ending. 

     The trouble with this bumper serving of creativity is that the meal is not only glutted but served so fast, it's difficult to digest.

     Somewhere up there on the screen, there's a movie. Maybe dozens of them. If this sounds like your cup of chaos, have fun. As for me,  I guess I still prefer my movies one at a time.

‘Dick Long’ harbors a bizarre secret

Two Alabama dimwits find themselves at the center of a comedy with a very weird twist.

Three Alabama dimwits are supposed to be rehearsing with their band, the oddly named Pink Freud. The rehearsal might be an occasion for the men to drink and smoke pot, but there's something more afoot. These good ole boys decide that it's time to "get weird."

It takes quite a while to learn what director Daniel Scheinert means by getting weird and when you find out, you may greet the newly acquired knowledge with a mixture of revulsion and disbelief.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Death of Dick Long serves up a low-life comedy about backward folks who reside in a small Alabama town.

As a result of that night of partying, one of them turns up dead, even though his buddies dump him (literally) at the doorstep of the local hospital. One the man's surviving pals is Zeke (Michael Abbott Jr.), a shaggy looking fellow with a wife and a daughter.

Zeke's running buddy Earl (Andre Hyland) seems detached from most everything, greeting just about any situation with a shrug as he vapes and blows out thick clouds of smoke. Perhaps intentionally, Zeke sports a haircut that evokes memories of Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber.

Scheinert treats the residents of this small town in a relaxed manner that allows them to make fun of themselves as the hapless Zeke and Earl try to cover their tracks to avoid being accused of murdering their friend.

But wait. A physician at the local hospital (Roy wood Jr.) has discovered something odd: The deceased man (Dick Long of the title) died from rectal hemorrhaging. Weirdness looms.

As his life falls apart, an increasingly nervous Zeke tries to deal with his wife (Virginia Newcomb), making up stories to ward off her suspicions.

At the same time, the local police chief (Janelle Cochrane) and her deputy (Sarah Baker) enter the story. They want to find out what happened to poor Dick Long.

No fair saying more, but know that the movie's big reveal is so off-putting and bizarre it challenges an audience to stay with these benighted characters as Scheinert begins to introduce a few serious touches to an otherwise wacky concoction that provides laughs while its characters squirm.

Abbott and Hyland make a good comic duo, but The Death of Dick Long eventually becomes a kind of kinky version of Dumb and Dumber. There are chuckles along the way but it's difficult not to wonder whether Scheinert wasn't trying too hard to sing in the weirdest possible key. The movie's big twist really is twisted.

His best pal is a corpse

Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe are game for an absurdist look at human isolation, but Swiss Army Man ultimately lets them down.

Had Swiss Army Man been a short film, it might have been a brilliant, semi-serious lark about a young man stranded on a barren Pacific island and in a life that's apparently cut off from the rest of humanity.

But at one hour and 35 minutes, Swiss Army Man plays like Samuel Beckett Lite, a wobbly, repetitive two-actor journey into the absurd.

The movie opens on a beach, where the aforementioned young man -- bearded and obviously desperate -- is about to hang himself. Almost too late, the man notices that a body has washed ashore. Could a companion have arrived? Is salvation at hand?

Not exactly.

Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who refer to themselves in the credits as "the Daniels," Swiss Army Man stars Paul Dano as Hank, a marooned man who develops a relationship with that beached body which, as if part of some cosmic joke, turns out to be a corpse.

The corpse -- one Manny by name and played by Daniel Radcliffe -- suffers from rampant flatulence, a condition the Daniels never lets us forget. More about that later.

Radcliffe's corpse of a character eventually begins talking. Could Hank be hallucinating? Maybe, but it doesn't really matter because Manny raises questions about the meaning of life in face of death's inevitability and about Hank's inability to connect with others. Hank explains life to Manny, but he's really opening a window into his own parched soul.

As the Swiss Army man of the title, Manny proves an all-purpose pal whose expulsions of gas propel Hank off the island and land him in the woods off the California coast.

In the forest, Hank carries Manny on his back, moves his limbs, keeps his head from flopping over, and teaches his new best friend the rudiments of living. He also helps Manny remember the life that death evidently has obliterated from his brain.

Dano and Radcliffe are game for an insistently strange movie that refuses to dot every "i" and cross every "t" or even to acknowledge that such coherence might be a worthwhile endeavor.

Worse yet, Dano and Radcliffe's mildly amusing duet never quite finds the emotional groove for which the Daniels seem to be searching. Brief flashbacks tell us that Hank has trouble reaching for the object of his desire, symbolized by a woman he sees on a bus ride.

I suppose there's a point beyond gimmickry to this man/corpse relationship. Inhibited to the point of inertia, Hank has so much difficulty choosing life, he's only able to reach out to a corpse.

I wasn't bored by The Swiss Army Man, but I wasn't motivated to give much thought to the questions the movie raises, either. Seems like I encountered them in dorm rooms eons ago.

And about those farts. They serve a higher purpose, acknowledging the unnecessary shame that's too often associated with natural bodily functions. Hopefully, though, you won't be sitting next to someone who takes this injunction seriously, and let's loose in the theater.