Everything Everywhere All At Once is charming, sprawling, and completely ridiculous

Perhaps the strangest thing about Everything Everywhere All At Once, a film in which a notable plot point involves riffs on 2001: A Space Odyssey to explain an alternate reality where humans evolved hot dogs for fingers, is that it sometimes doesn't feel weird. The film is a mix of a frenetic music video marathon, slapstick martial arts comedy, and a surrealist sci-fi pastiche. It is anchored in an earnest family drama that is elevated by a series of great performances.

There is a lot going on in Everything Everywhere, but the basic idea is the same. Evelyn Wang is the harried owner of a failing laundromat. Her husband Waymond has served her with divorce papers, her father's health is failing, and her daughter Joy is frustrated by her own disapproval. A ruthless IRS worker named Deirdre Beaubeirdra is auditing her for, among other dubious decisions, claiming a karaoke machine as a tax expense.

As Evelyn attempts to save her business, Waymond's body is suddenly possessed by a counterpart from another world. He told her that she was the only person who could save the multiverse. She needs to get her taxes done.

The multiverse's precise mechanics are complex and not always logical. Most of these tasks are gross, like getting paper cuts or eating chapstick. For verse-jumpers who push themselves too far, comprehending this range of infinite possibilities can lead to a devastating existential crisis.

The setup allows for a lot of mini-narratives and a lot of colorful costume changes, and it also allows for a lot of eccentric martial arts sequences that work on dream logic. The fight scenes of Everything Everywhere are more entertaining, more creative, and better-shot than those of many full-fledged action movies, including ones from the very cinematic franchises it is clearly drawing on. They are more fun than almost anything in the films made by the Russo brothers, who served as producers here.

Her main self is a confused everywoman who can suddenly pull off incredible acrobatic feats, while her other personas show her effortless charisma. Both tone and body language change in split-second transitions as he shifts between his hapless primary-universe self and his hyper-competent alter-ego. In one of her many guises,Curtis gets a menacing turn.

Chekhov's guns are more on an aesthetic level than a narrative one, and Everything Everywhere is full of intricate connections. There are jokes that range from mild to fairly caustic in the extended multiverse vignettes built from minor details earlier in the film. Swiss Army Man, a film that starred Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse, was also directed by Kwan and Scheinert. A few of these callbacks feel extraneous, and based on a Q&A session following the film's premiere, that's after at least one subplot was left on the cutting room floor. They help sell the film's humor by spinning cinematic references and throwaway gags and delivering them with visual flair.

The dramatic elements don't always add up. Everything Everywhere's sci-fi sequences can be written like they are marking time between absurdities, with expository dialogue that doesn't gel with the more compelling and naturalistic exchanges elsewhere. The script is full of monologues about life and humanity that sound good in isolation but are shuffled around as abruptly as the film's costumes, asserting character motives that haven't been well-established before that moment.

The relationship between Evelyn, Joy, Waymond, and Deirdre builds up to something sweet that stays just a hair away from being cloying. Archetypes are not often seen in mainstream sci-fi movies. The film shows them as part of a single complicated person. The multiverse definitely exists, and it contains people whose fingers are definitely hot dogs, but its array of worlds have the vibe of fantasies.

The cast bring consistency to the most nonsensical scenarios. Waymond is vulnerable even when he is dragging Evelyn around the multiverse. While she gets less screen time as her original-universe character, she balances being viciously nihilistic and hopelessly lost as one of Joy's alter egos. Like many real-world jerks, Deirdre is capable of kindness and affection.

In a film reminiscent of many earlier movies about disaffected losers who discover they are secretly heroes, Yeoh offers a poignant and magnetic take on the topic. A mature human who is disappointed in life is surrounded by people who are flawed but decent. Evelyn's plunge into the multiverse is predicted by the way she navigates her multigenerational and multilingual family, her rapid-fire dialog switch between Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. One of Everything Everywhere's running jokes is that its main character is the least talented version of herself, but the gaps between her selves never seem to be that big.

For all the weird stuff thrown into Everything Everywhere, the riskiest move is choosing a nearly 140-minute run time for a comedy built around deliberate whiplash, a potentially polarizing style of humor, and an exhausting pace. If Everything Everywhere doesn't work for you, that feeling will last for a long time. It might be one of the funniest movies you see this year.

The movie Everything Everywhere All At Once will be in theaters on March 25th.