You don't have to feel like a failure or see your life crumbling before your eyes to wonder what might have been had you simply made a few different choices. It's also not a new concept that there may be a multiverse with different versions of ourselves existing based on the different variables that could emerge. The concept has been dealt with from Star Trek to Rick and Morty and it continues to be revisited because it's hard to fail to make it interesting.
Everything Everywhere All At Once made an old thing new, exciting, captivating, hilarious and heartbreaking.
When we first meet Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), we're introduced to a middle-aged wife and mother. She's also the owner and operator of a failing laundromat and dealing with the pressures of being an immigrant in trouble with the IRS. Her husband Waymond (played by Ke Huy Quan who is reemerging after a twenty year break from acting) in this version of himself, is quiet, weak, and every bit as unimpressive as Evelyn. Her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is depressed and fights her mother every step of the way.
It's when Evelyn and her family go to talk to the IRS auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis) that a different version of Waymond inhabits the universe to which we've been introduced. He gives Evelyn a set of instructions which she reluctantly follows which introduces her to an endless set of possibilities and different versions of herself and those around her. There's a threat to the whole multiverse and this unimpressive person is thrust into the thick of it all.
The movie handled the exposition gracefully and kept the movie entertaining while it was getting into the rules of how it all is supposed to work. This portion of the movie is probably the most chaotic; but, it's entirely worth it to be able to have the rest of the movie just flood over you. If the time wasn't taken, some of the most entertaining scenes in the movie like a scene involving a butt plug or a hilarious Ratatouille reference would either be bogged down in exposition or would just be confusing.
Still, no matter how funny and bizarre much of the movie is, it never loses its heart and there's always a sense of high stakes.
It can't be easy to tell a coherent, understandable story while taking full advantage of a concept of infinite possibilities; but, directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert managed to walk that line. It's one thing to deal with how big decisions, like deciding to move to a new country or get married, change who you ultimately become. It's another to acknowledge how simply taking the scenic route to work one day could change your life. It's another thing to deal with how the decisions of other people change who you are. It's yet another to play with how the universe itself could have emerged differently. This movie deals with all of those components cleanly and playfully.
This is a great movie that never drags throughout it's nearly two and a half hour runtime. I can't recommend it enough.