HE to Happy Larry: Your observations are “inspiring” in a certain light. Life will sometimes surprise. Unsung or less-than-stellar talents sometimes luck into unexpected rewards. And as truly grotesque as The Whale was and is in certain respects, Brendan Fraser‘s fat-suit performance was as respectable and even touching as this sort of thing gets. (Especially the white-light death scene.)
But Everything Everywhere All At Once will forever be regarded as an irksome (do I hear infuriating?) curio…a film that even the director’s own mother didn’t get and couldn’t understand the adulation for.
Did you honestly come out of that film full of “holy moley eureka” enthusiasm for Ke Huy Quan‘s performance? He was more or less fine (said his lines with urgency and proficiency, hit his marks) but he won because of (a) the comeback narrative + (b) the Asian identity pride thing + (c) because he brought big emotion to his Golden Globes acceptance speech.
Jamie Lee Curtis‘s IRS bitch performance was broad and coarse and rather absurd, like a character out of The Wizard of Oz….I felt intensely irritated by her acting (and her clownish makeup) start to finish.
Michelle Yeoh‘s athleticism and commitment to the dismayed, stressed-out character she played was also fine but again, her Oscar was about (a) Asian representation and (b) breaking the glass ceiling =plus (c) Cate Blanchett already has two Oscars.
Do you honestly think that EEAAO will be watched and re-watched by future film enthusiasts? That it will be cited by future film historians as a ground-breaker or seminal influencer? There’s a community of film Catholics who are sadly burdened with a sense of taste, and among this fraternity EEAAO is not just disliked but deeply loathed. In my humble judgment it is one of the absolute worst films to ever take the Best Picture Oscar….hands down, no question. The Movie Godz have taken note and are actually fuming as we speak.
