Everything Everywhere All at Once begins with a window into the daily struggles of an everyday woman. Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is being squeezed from all sides: The IRS is auditing her business, she and her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), might be getting a divorce, she struggles to understand her adult daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), and shes caring for her aging and disapproving father (James Hong).

One version of this movie could have been a domestic drama, following our frazzled and beleaguered protagonist through the grind of her precarious life. But in the hands of Swiss Army Man directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the bold and inventive duo known as Daniels, something wild is about to happen. The family heads to a meeting with a hilariously grouchy IRS auditor, Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). Waymond or an alternate version of him, as we soon learn hands Evelyn some instructions hastily written on the back of one of their tax forms. She follows the instructions, which unlock an ability for her to enter a series of alternate universes. What if she hadnt married Waymond and left China with him? What other lives could she have lived? She jumps between different versions of herself in various and increasingly wacky universes, taking her and us on a wild, almost psychedelic ride.

I was so intrigued and I was so overwhelmed by the fact that these two young men had written a story for an older woman older, immigrant Asian mother and basically at the end of the day, in fact, gave her superpowers, Yeoh said, describing the first time she read Daniels script. Shes like a superhero because she says all the universes keep the family together. That they had the audacity, the boldness, the courage to write that. If you look around us, when was the last time you saw an older woman being the superhero?

Lucky for us, not only does this movie give the legendary Yeoh a chance to be a superhero, but also builds an entire Michelle Yeoh cinematic universe. We get homages to everything from 2001: A Space Odyssey to In the Mood for Love. We get a variety of genres and moods: sci-fi, action, adventure, film noir and yes, a tender domestic drama. One of the beauties of the film is that wrapped inside the dizzying chaos, theres a tale about a Chinese immigrant family just trying to get by, a mother and daughter trying to unlearn their intergenerational trauma, and how to find joy in times when nothing seems to matter.

Its about a story of a very ordinary family, right? And then she became extraordinary, Yeoh said. At the end of the day, the humanity of what it was was most important. You do not give up. You dont give up on your family. You dont give up on your love, and in whatever universe and wherever you go, you go around searching for each other.