The consensus on Nothing Except Everything -- stylized as nothing, except everything. -- seems to be that it lets us know what to expect as the younger Zoomers are getting old enough to make movies. Esther On Film wrote that it's basically Everything Everywhere All At Once meets Don Hertzfeldt, adding that "the kids who are growing up watching Family Guy clips over Subway Surfers gameplay on TikTok are going to make so much insipid tripe that looks exactly like this".
Similarly scathing was Jeff Zhang, causing several blowhards on Twitter to try to point out how mean movie critics are; alas, those days of discourse only served to show us how mean they AREN'T, especially compared to the heyday of Pauline Kael.
But why are people so angry at those who roast this short? Well, because it's actually a student film. Sort of. It's a student film with a professional cast, numerous executive producer credits, professional-looking cameras, and other things that only happen when you already have industry connections, hence Zhang's opening line: "Wesley Wang's nothing, except everything. Is the antithesis of all the janky pleasures of amateur filmmaking." (In other words, he is decidedly not beating up on some kid; he's treating this very much professional production the way a critic treats professional productions.)
This means we also get a fairly privileged assessment of the Zoomer human (Zooman?) condition. Regardless, experience tells me you don't need to be an especially privileged or out-of-touch Zoomer to think EEAAO was the be-all-end-all of absurdist profundity or that briefly referencing climate change, Jung, or whatever makes you look thoughtful, so I'm sure we'll be getting more Gen-Z flicks like it.
I guess I prefer something like this to Are You Lost in the World Like Me?, that animated short film that critiques the smartphone era with all the depth of a Minion meme shared by your aunt (who also occasionally reposts the film with the caption "LIKE if u get it"). Wang's movie is more about the Zoomer experience than a critique of Society™.
Sadly, it doesn't explore this admittedly fascinating generation (born into a world of chaos, their best years snatched by lockdowns; a generation that's more sincere in their art compared to Millennials' self-conscious irony, yet also deathly afraid of sex scenes because all they've known during their youth is MCU movies) in any especially interesting ways. In some ways, however, the film's resonance may transcend Zoomers -- I, a curmudgeonly Millennial, definitely remember having rich friends in high school who could have made something like this for graduation if they so wished and think themselves "deep" for it (instead they dropped out to become bloggers).
