Unlikely award winner Everything Everywhere All At Once is perhaps the first film to capture the chaotic mental dopamine of constant Internet use, which is not necessarily a good thing, though obviously most people can relate. Attempting philosophy, action, and comedy all at once, the film can be best summed up as a mixture of the Matrix, a Stephen Chow or Jackie Chan film, It's a Wonderful Life, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. A disparate set of influences, nearly all of which are better films.

Stylistically, the Daniels borrow the most from Michael Bay here, pushing his type of rapid-cut, juvenile sensory overload to arty levels. They nevertheless lack both Bay's sense of composition (con), and also his misanthropy (pro, though the stuff they do to Jamie Lee Curtis goes beyond unflattering). Still, the overall effect the film produces is about the same, especially when it comes to the humor.

Unlike the Kung-fu comedies of Chow, the humor of EEAAO lacks a sense of comic delirium and is mostly fractured and crude instead. When in Chow's 'Shaolin Soccer' a soccer game transforms into a trench war, it's funny not only because it's unexpected, but also because it parodies the intensity of the sport. Had the Daniels made that film they would have just as likely turned the game into a sex dungeon. Too often they're only willing to throw random stuff at you in place of actual wit---the concept that alternate realities can be experienced through statistically improbable actions is funny at first, but gets dull very quickly, especially as it's used almost exclusively for high school gross-out humor: inhaling flies, sticking mucus in someone's mouth, etc.

The resulting action scenes lack the smooth inventiveness of even a lesser Jackie Chan film. For another example, the fight in 'The Accidental Spy' where Chan, completely naked, tries to beat off several assailants (while covering his privates with anything at hand) is infinitely funnier than anything offered here. The main reason is that the best humor, like Chan's, needs some basis in reality so you can understand the characters' reactions and frustrations. The Daniels have that in the opening scenes but quickly abandon it, choosing instead to indulge a kind of TikTok randomness.

It can still be imaginative (I'll give it that) but only up to a certain point. You'd think a reality where people evolved giant hot dogs for fingers would look entirely different even in terms of simple objects such as doorknobs and shirts, but the Daniels merely show us the same world, only where people play the piano with their toes and squirt condiments at each other. Again, this is more about throwing random crap at the screen instead of allowing the premise to develop naturally.

So the film fails as a comedy, but how about as a philosophical tract? Like 'It's a Wonderful Life', EEAAO deals with the lost chances of life, 'what might have been' through alternate reality. It goes without saying that Capra's film is far more mature and thoughtful, but it's also more emotionally moving. The Daniels are able to engage nihilism head-on, since especially in the face of the infinite multiverse any form of meaning melts away. The problem is that they don't know how to address it; the idea that humans are no more than insignificant specks is only indirectly repudiated, and the final message is spoken: 'We don't know what's happening in this world, but just be kind to each other!' This conclusion is so basic that it's beyond criticism, except for the fact that it is so basic. EEAAO lacks Capra's edge---advocating as he did kindness and happiness even in the face of intolerant cruelty---though the Daniels' shallow Hollywood Gnosticism has obviously struck some kind of chord in our culturally confused, digitally-addled times.