For most movies, this level of indecisiveness would surely spell cinematic disaster. But, as already mentioned, this film is no ordinary movie. The genre indecisiveness that by all rights should doom this film to the Elysian fields of film mediocrity only serves to liberate the writer/director team of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's outlandish vision, leading to a cinematic experience unlike anything that's come before in American film history.

On the surface the film appears to be a structural mess, nothing more than a hodge-podge of random events that have little connection or relationship to one another. On this level, the narrative feels disjointed, chaotic and oftentimes confusing. The overarching narrative and arc of the central characters– as many audience reviews indicate– unclear.

And yet even the seeming chaos serves an important role. The confusing mess of a narrative is the perfect nod to our own modern life of frayed attention spans, endless distraction and hopeless separation, where we all seem more interested in our own individual destinies than in what it is we might accomplish together, and where life serves up a buffet of limitless vacuous choices just as readily as an all-consuming existential angst that makes us powerless to act on any of those choices. Indeed, the central purpose of the film is voiced early on by the lead character: “How can we get back… to how it’s supposed to be?” That is, to a world that makes any sense?

To get us back, the filmmakers employ a rather way out and unexpected plot device for a film about family, one that has become a staple of 2022 superhero films, the multiverse. But unlike Marvel's big budget Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness that grants us an extended peek into some fantastic CGI generated parallel worlds, in this film we are offered only fleeting glimpses of the strange and bizarre worlds that make up the infinite constellation of universes in the multiverse. The central action takes place in this world, in the ordinary confines of IRS tax offices and the failing Chinese laundromat and within the tedium of the dysfunctional Chinese family.

As the film opens, we see the central character of Evelyn, played by Michelle Yeoh, working to sort out the family's tax difficulties. The family owns a struggling laundromat. Their taxes are being audited by a cold, battle axe with no patience for fiscal nonsense. They have already run afoul of this auditor, Darlene, played pitch perfect by an almost unrecognizable Jamie Lee Curtis, and are seeking to find a way to avoid assessment of tax penalties. Simultaneously, the family is readying the laundromat for a Chinese New Year's party for their loyal customers.

The matriarch, Evelyn, whose iron will and determination holds the family together and keeps their laundry business barely afloat is married to the weak-willed Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), whose greatest accomplishment, in Evelyn’s eyes, is putting googly eyes on the bags of laundry washed for customers. The couple has a teenage daughter, ironically named Joy (Stephanie Hsu). Joy is anything but joyful– confused, anxious, depressed. She looks for loving acceptance of her unconventional lifestyle choices and her lesbian girlfriend, Becky, from her domineering mother. And just to make things even more stressful and chaotic, Evelyn's infirmed elderly father is visiting from China and staying with the couple in the small apartment above the laundromat that the couple owns.

It's on route to the all-important meeting with tax auditor Darlene that all hell breaks loose. We quickly learn from Alphaverse Waymond, a more heroic version of husband laundromat Waymond from an alternate universe– who would make Bruce Lee proud with his hilarious beat down of the tax office security team with nothing more than a fanny pack– that the entire multiverse faces an existential threat from the dreaded Jobu Tupaki. During one of his brief body borrows of laundromat Waymond, Alpha Waymond drops another bombshell: that simple laundromat owner Evelyn is the multiverse’s last best hope.

Over the next nearly two hours, we watch as Evelyn and her family members are taken on a riotous romp through multiple universes, with each crazy universe pop-in more bizarre than the next. We see a world where Evelyn decides not to go with Waymond to America and instead becomes– much like Yeoh herself–an action movie star; others where she's a hibachi chef, a sign twirler, a cleaning service worker and even a rock with googly eyes and a piñata.

With each pop-in to an alternate world, the reluctant Evelyn grows stronger and more committed to the task. She is able to gain temporary access to remarkable abilities possessed by her many alternate selves through a technique called verse jumping shown to her by Alphaverse Waymond. This technique allows her to temporarily sync up with the consciousness of these many alternate selves. In one hilarious scene, we see her vanquish her foes with nothing more than a makeshift shield that she twirls to devastating effect with the newly acquired sign twirling skills.

But as the conflict drags on, Evelyn realizes that Tupaki is just too powerful. The only solution to defeat Tupaki and her dreaded doomsday device, the everything bagel, is for Evelyn to become as powerful as her; or in Evelyn's words to become just like her. In the process though, Evelyn goes to the dark side. She succumbs to the same nihilistic outlook as Tupaki. In one of the film’s later scenes, she can be heard spouting Jobu’s nihilistic refrain, “that nothing matters.”

The everything bagel, like Jobu Tupaki, is the ultimate expression of postmodern nihilism, a black hole, a big zero. There are numerous subtle allusions to it throughout the film. Tupaki lets us know that she didn't track down Evelyn to destroy her but to find someone who could “see what I see, feel what I feel.” And what is it she sees? The true nature of things: that all we are doing is “going around in circles,” with only a few stolen moments free of the confusion and chaos, where anything makes sense.

To this point in the story, all characters have sought to find resolution to the Jobu problem through conflict and disagreement. The conflict and confusion we see expressed on the screen are symbolic of the way we tend to see the world–adversarial, a place of separation and apartness that we are helpless to overcome. Existence in such a world is not freedom, it's a trap. The only way we are truly free: extinction. There is no other way out. The only appropriate response: to not care. Or, so we are left to think. As Tupaki puts it: “if nothing matters, then all that pain and guilt you feel for not making something of your life goes away.”

But it's just at this moment that the filmmakers come to our rescue. And interestingly enough it's not the indomitable Evelyn and her heroic fighting that saves the day. It's the unassuming and supposedly wimpy laundromat Waymond. Having seen enough violence and bloodshed, in a fit of sadness and anguish, he shouts out to the combatants: “Be Kind! Please! Please! Can we just stop fighting?” Waymond: “When I choose to see the good side of things, I'm not being naive. It is strategic and necessary….I know you see yourself as a fighter [speaking to Evelyn]. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight.” Suddenly, rather than trying to defeat and vanquish her foes, Evelyn chooses to help and connect them, curing a foe’s neck injury, uniting would-be lovers and working to right the wrongs that her own life choices had wrought. She has started to fight like Waymond. Kindness, not conflict, becomes her weapon of choice.

The overarching message of this film is simple, yet profound: when you see the world through the space of kindness and care, a whole new set of solutions become available to you. It's only from such an orientation that relationship is possible, that seeing beyond our differences can truly happen. The Chinese family that we see at the end of the film is fundamentally different than the one we see at the beginning. Rather than choose to pursue their own individual destinies–compelled by care and love for one another–the family members choose each other, even if that choice means a mundane, unglamorous life of doing taxes and laundry.