I’ve never seen anything like this movie; the closest thing to cinematic anarchy and chaos. Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert – they work under one name; Daniel broke just about every rule, wisdom, and the law of filmmaking and made a film that is both touching and bonkers at the same time.

And radically creative.

The directors blew out all the stops. The movie’s plot has so many ups, downs, twists, surprises, and hiccups that spoiling it would not be possible. Neither would summarizing the story. I couldn’t possibly do it.

Michele Yeoh, who plays Evelyn Wang, and Stephenie Hsu, who plays her complex and wounded daughter Joy are brilliant. The movie is a wild runaway cross between a spoof of the superhero genre and the warm story of a family torn apart and fighting to heal.

That’s quite an unorthodox mix.

The movie is also a heartfelt plea for people to be good to one another in these often violent and nasty times.

The movie is too long and the narrative only occasionally makes sense (it’s not really meant to)  but moves like a rocket and spins and dances and explodes like a psychedelic pill. Yeoh is a reluctant and ethical  Superhero, and  Superhero movies may never be the same. That is a good thing.

The directors have actually worked to create a hero that has a real message to send, once your head (and the movie)  stops spinning.

The action scenes are relentless, and the movie is a piercing whack at the superhero genre.

There is the tongue-in-cheek multiverse galaxy bs, and maybe two or three hundred very fast-paced karate fights. Curiously, this turns out to be a bittersweet marital and parenting comedy, a story of immigrant striving and struggles, and, as it turns out, a painful but moving drama of mother-daughter love.

From beginning to end, we are bombarded with sci-fi superhero mumbo jumbo about various universes, but the superhero battles and the now-familiar fight for evil are not the movie’s point.

The movie is tricky; it begins with what is typical movie realism and then switches to the chaos, which goes on for hours. (The movie is frustratingly repetitious at times).

Evelyn, who operates a laundromat and dry cleaning store in an unnamed city, is frantic and overwhelmed by work and tax troubles, so distant and unavailable to her family that her daughter has come to hate her, and her husband is filing for divorce to get her attention.

The movie takes off when Deirdre, an overbearing IRS bureaucrat played brilliantly and hilariously by Jame Lee Curtis, has summoned the family to an audit that threatens their business,  and mousy husband Waymond suddenly turns into a galactic combat space warrior.

There is a lot of action in the movie,  more action than Captain America sees in several movies combined.

Wayland informs the work-a-holic but peaceable Evelyn that the “multiverse” is threatened by the usual power-mad monster, his/her name is Jobu Tupaki, and Evelyn is the only person on earth who can save the planet.

Evelyn has no interest in being a warrior – she is the superhero genre’s most unwilling hero to date, she makes Batman seem enthusiastic  –  but she has little choice. It’s either fight or die.

She leaps into the multiverse by doing something – anything – crazy and presses a button on a bright green earpiece. The movie makes no more sense when you are watching it in the theater.

All through this movie, people change characters and faces, moods and motives change, people brush off the most devastating injuries.

I think the film editors must have been brain-damaged by the end.

At first, Evelyn seems to be yet another of those superheroes who is the only one who can save the planet from unstoppable evil and who finally gets it. But she never really gets it.

And the movie is never really about that.

It’s a creative and fearless way to tell the story of an immigrant family and its troubles.

The film has an almost disorienting ability to switch from mockery and slapstick buffoonery and unreality to pathos and vulnerability.

Yeoh’s karate kicks and expressions are fantastic, and always reluctant. Fighting is the last choice for her..

The movie ultimately turns out to be a morality play, which I found oddly affecting and touching, given the mayhem spinning all around.

Evelyn is a moral person; she fights for free will and meaning, taking responsibility for her own mistakes in life and honoring her obligations to her family, even her nasty father (James Hong, who is terrific), who almost disowned her for marrying Waymond.

Some of the tension with her daughter comes from Joy’s openly gay relationship with her friend Becky, something Evelyn is desperate to hide from her bigoted and grumpy father.

For Joy, this is the last straw.

As it turns out, the multiverse is not so much a battleground but a multi-dimensional therapy workshop, where the family gets to work on its issues, quite often through martial arts, at which Evilyn becomes adapt, even ferocious.

It’s a violent way to deal with your husband and kid, but it works for Evelyn.

I was surprised to find myself moved by the performances and dazzled and sometimes mesmerized by the mind-blowing visual reality, colors, movements, and special effects, which are unique even these days. I’ve never seen a movie like this before.

This is close to being a great movie in a creative sense, yet it doesn’t make it to the level of a great movie, for all of its no-holds-barred inventiveness. The theater where we saw was jam-packed with young people, which was a nice thing to see, and they seemed to love every minute of it.

I predict this will be an overnight cult movie.

On the downside, the film is too messy, sloppy, circular, and overly long without any discipline. It is great that the directors pulled out all of the stops for it.

But the movie reminded me of teenage boys who can’t turn off their computer games on their own, somebody has to stop them and make them go to bed.

This movie felt like there were no grown-ups in the room.  I highly recommend it, you may not see a more interesting movie than this for years.

The movie is too much in too many places, but when all is said and done, it is an exciting movie about the importance of loving and morality in a world filled with anger, hatred, and lies.

It’s a lot more serious than it seems. And it made me feel good at the end.