Well, that's poignant in this case (rather than just a wisecrack) as this complicated story plays fair in a few ways to help you through a rapid timeline of identities and conflicts, starting with keeping the locations sparse. They might be in a distant universe's version of the tax office or the laundry business Evelyn runs or the opera house/cinema where she meets a suave version of her dadbod husband but they are all controllably recognisable. Also, we're given enough indicators and instructions early on to get the hang of the restless shifting that will occupy almost all of the two plus hours of run time.
Things to keep in mind from the off are that Evelyn and her many failed ambitions at middle age still thinks of herself as potential. Her nemesis, sometimes in the form of her daughter in a series of increasingly bizarre personae, is the circle, a thing of completion, destruction and repetition (also a giant bagel as the event horizon of a black hole). These are just starting points but they are active influences in every action and conflict on screen. This might sound like hard wank (not a typo) but if you're not on board with this and keep waiting for the zippy plot to settle down and get on with it you'll be waiting way past the end credits. Stroll up the gangway and you're in for a ride that tackles a lot of profundity about the choices we make in life that is as touching as it is massively entertaining.
At the centre of the cast and all the universes is Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn, put upon and still expecting to make something of herself as a creative performer. Alone among the main cast her core persona remains intact throughout as the others switch character traits and personal force. We need this if only as an anchor for the multiverse miasma this story gives us. Ke Huy Kwan as her husband does the most to switch between whoever it is possessing him at the time with a base character recognisable through palpable subtlety. Stephanie Hsu has the most fun as the enemy of all the universes as well as a young adult trying to establish her own identity in her family. And one of the most startling turns comes from Jamie Lee Curtis as Dierdre the tax agent/interdimensional monster/etc, in a frump wig and prosthetic boady padding.
If a universe where the inhabitants all have hotdogs for fingers and have to use their feet to play the piano, or jumping between universes by doing irrational actions makes you think of the cuter end of whimsy and the movies of Michel Gondry or Spike Jonez be aware that the humour of this one is kept shy of all out comedy, trusting more in the appeal of concepts which helps to keep focussed on the graver aspects of the overall situation. When the Kubrickian scene of prehistoric primates with hotdog fingers defeating the ones with five more human like digits per hand starts funny, the sight of one of the vanquished lifeless and bloody hands is not. A late revelation by one of the central characters's alter egos leads to a fight scene with one of the most surprising outcomes I've ever witnessed. It's profound but it's light.
I could keep going but the scope and complexity forbid it. Don't see this movie if you doubt your alertness or feel remotely drowsy, you will miss it. However, if you like the idea of a life examined through an ingenious creative filter you should see it now.
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