Comic book readers are already familiar with the multiverse. It has opened up a variety of story-telling potential and has inspired the imagination of who knows how many people. But now it appears the TV and movies are starting to play around with the concept. Whether it’s to bring 2 different Spider-Men together or explaining why “The Batman” doesn’t connect to Ben Affleck, movies are now seeing the potential as well. But now it’s time to take a look at how an indie studio like A24 handles such a concept. And it is an insane – and touching – as you might expect.

We begin with Evelyn Wang getting ready for an audit by the IRS. There’s her husband Waymond, daughter Joy, and her estranged father referred to as Gong Gong. Which naturally means this is the right time for her husband to be taken over by a version of himself from the Alpha Verse! Jobu Tupaki is a threat that threatens the safety of the multiverse and it happens to be Evelyn’s daughter from the multiverse. She must now utilize verse-jumping to find the skills necessary to fight back.

I suppose we should start off with how the movie deals with the multiverse concept. It’s existence is explained by how different choices in the timeline creates a new universe, leading to really an infinite multiverse. It’s a common way of explaining a concept like this, something comics themselves have used a couple of times. But it’s important to remember that it isn’t limited to different choices Evelyn or her family make. We get glimpses of different universes that were not shaped by Evelyn or anyone in her family. As for verse-jumping, people from the Alpha Verse have tech and are trained to mentally access another version of themselves. Their memories, skills, and bodies. But this also runs the risk of them being distracted or pulled back by that other universe as their minds are kind of split in multiple universes. They are trained to deal with that fallout, but it affects Evelyn for better and for worse. Overall, this multiverse isn’t that different from ones people might have experienced in other mediums. But trust me when I say it is still a very unique film.

One of the main things that establishes this multiverse story as unique is how they are able to verse-jump. They have to perform random actions that allow them to access certain versions of themselves. The weirder the action the better chance of finding skills that are useful in your scenario. Examples include getting 4 paper cuts in between all your fingers, downing a 2 liter bottle of orange soda in seconds, or furiously humping a lamp. And those are the examples that don’t spoil anything in the movie! This obviously leads to a lot of funny moments and bits that really land. The way this movie is shot and presented is similar to a number of South Korean films. What I mean is that it blends a lot of different styles and emotions together into a single movie that shouldn’t work as well as it does. But you are going to have a blast all the way through!

As for an underlying messages, this is sort of a 2-in-1 situation. Let’s first look at the larger theme. Jobu Tupaki is a version of Joy from the Alpha Verse that gets pushed during Verse-Jumping training so hard that she is seemingly lost. But when she comes back, she is described as this entity of darkness and nothingness. She talks about how due to the overwhelming size and scope of the multiverse, looking at the morality of specific actions and choices in one single world seems pointless and insignificant. And chances are, we might make a new discovery that’s even larger and will make us even more insignificant. So she views existence from a “nothing matters” perspective and tries to get Evelyn to see things like she does before ultimately ending their existence.

But the movie ends up deciding to not take Jobu’s side. It is easy to see things that way, easy to fight back against an idea or concept that scares you. But in a multiverse as massive an insane as this one, the most important thing that remains constant is love. Caring for one another and showing compassion. There may be things that are massive and terrifying, but that means family and loved ones are even more important.

Time for the second underlying themes that goes hand in hand with the first. The importance of making Evelyn and her husband Chinese immigrants is to show the cultural divide that within their own family that can honestly be applied to any family. You have older members sticking to traditional ways of living and their own beliefs that don’t seem to account for how the modern world has evolved. The younger ons who have grown up with this world and end up being at odds with their own family about their beliefs and the way they live their lives. And some family members trying their best to bridge that gap but might be making things more difficult without realizing it. This movie is trying to show that institutions and old concepts and ideas can be limiting. They can damage our relationships with other people. But if you can realize that and try to move past it, you can work on fixing damaged relationships and find some deeper meaning.

And these ideas are told in the most entertaining of ways. This movie takes advantage of the multiverse concepts and shows off some wild action scenes and peeks into bizarre worlds. The actions required to verse-jump are incredible and the good kind of stupid. All the actors get a chance to show off their wide range, especially Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn. But in all of this madness, there is an emotional anchor that makes this an extremely relatable story. Please check this out in theaters while you have the chance. Or at least make a plan to seek it out and just watch the insanity unfold a touching human story. I promise you won’t regret it.