An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save what's important to her by connecting with the lives she could have led in other universes.
Released: 2022-03-24
Runtime: 139 minutes
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy
Stars: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, James Hong, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, Anthony Molinari, Peter Banifaz, Audrey Wasilewski, Jenny Slate, Andy Le, Brian Le, Daniel Scheinert, Harry Shum Jr., Biff Wiff, Sunita Mani, Aaron Lazar, Tallie Medel, Li Jing, Panuvat Anthony Nanakornpanom, Dylan Henry Lau, Michiko Nishiwaki, Cara Marie Chooljian, Randall Archer, Efka Kvaraciejus, Neravana Cabral, Chelsey Goldsmith, Craig Henningsen, Jason Hamer, Timothy Ralston, Hiroshi Yada, Jane Lui, Timothy Eulich, Boon Pin Koh, Li Jing, Randy Newman
Director: Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan
Comments
thechrisfigaro - 24 June 2024 A Pretentious, Perverse, and Utterly Pointless Mess The film includes self-inserts by co-director Daniel Scheinert. Scheinert portrays himself as a submissive, immoral, degenerate pervert who loves weird freaky stuff. He literally put himself in the movie as a porn addict with a kink for domination. In one scene he's being tied up and carried away by a prostitute/ dominatrix. And in another he again is being gagged, bent over, and spanked. In slow motion by the way.
The other self-insert is through Waymond, the father of the lesbian daughter. Her father is a weak, whimpering man who blames himself for everything in this mess of a movie. That's probably how the directors see themselves.
The directors have some weird obsession with dildos. Daniel Scheinert and his other directing buddy are known for their perverse movies. Especially the film "Swiss Army Man" which is filled with incestophilia and necrophilia. Just absolutely disgusting.
Also, white liberalism is a cancer. Divorce, really? Between Chinese immigrants? Even the wife was shocked by her husband's decision. It's a sacred vow she said, which is 100% correct. But what do these degenerate directors know about anything sacred like marriage.
The fact that homosexuality is the number one reason for all of this "chaos" is just proof of the degeneracy of these perverted liberals.
The movie's plot revolves around a lesbian daughter who has a lesbian girlfriend. And the lesbian daughter has no life outside of just being gay. No job, no friends, no goals or plans. She's just a miserable lesbian woman and we never get to find out why she's miserable other than being a homosexual. Her alpha alternate self is a murdering psycho for NO REASON because according to her, "Nothing matters." Apparently, her alpha alternate mother tried to kill her by pushing her too hard in some experiment?
"Though the overloaded mind usually dies, instead her mind was fractured." - actual quote from the movie.
Oh, and the actual villain of this movie is not the mass murdering psycho lesbian daughter. No, it's the grandad. He's a bigot and a villain for not accepting his lesbian granddaughter's sexuality (her ONLY trait btw) and for being too stern with his daughter. He's too manly and strict, unlike his son-in-law, Waymond, who is weak and pathetic, so he's bad.
The film attempts to explore chaos, but as a viewer, the sense of disorder appears more in the direction and execution rather than within the plot itself. The film's chaotic nature might resonate with fans of surreal animation like "Rick and Morty," but it might not appeal to everyone, especially those seeking structured storytelling.
"The less sense it makes, the better" - actual quote from the movie.
What a time to be alive. This is what warrants a best picture, best director, and best screen play.
Overall, 4/10.
MisterOakley - 8 June 2024 Give It a Second Try The first time that I watched this movie, when it came out in 2022, I gave it a 6/10. I liked what it was going for, though it felt a little muddled towards the end, and was overall a bit too wacky and silly for my tastes.
Two years later, I revisited the movie, and was shocked by how much I enjoyed it, even from the very first moments I found myself entranced by the visuals and laughing at the cute little jokes that were being made, and all this was in the first ten minutes, before anything even got crazy. The whole experience was so overwhelming the first time that I saw it, that I forgot that even the calmer moments in the beginning were superbly well done.
The movie at times is still a little bit too silly for my tastes, but I think that maybe that's the point. In my personal interpretation, I think that the point of the silly and cringey moments, besides being entertainment value for people who like that kind of humor is to show that even in our darkest moments, the world around us doesn't care about setting a proper tone. Just because we are feeling depressed or alone doesn't mean that the world around us is going to turn into a film-noir, where the whole universe is as sad as we're feeling, to the point where it can feel like the world is mocking what we are going through with it's flagrant disregard for what we are going through, and in order to reach someone that is going through something really hard, you have to cut through all of that nonsense, and in order to do that you must first accept that all of this silliness is part of life, and that you're going to get nowhere fighting against the current. We need to be the caring ones, because nothing else is going to do it for us.
There is also the much more obvious points of Optimism overcoming Nihilism, love overcoming violence, and togetherness overcoming loneliness, but there's a fourth point that I couldn't quite parse until this second watch-through.
The ending of the film gets a bit murky with what it is going for in terms of messaging, or at least it seemed like it the first time that I saw it. She's letting her daughter go, but she's not, but she is, but she's not, until my second watch I couldn't figure out what it meant, but when I figured it out, it felt so obvious that I slapped myself in the head.
Despite everything, the daughter can't return to her mother, because it's not the right environment for her to be living in at the time, and it is only when the mother changes too, symbolized by her rock also falling off the cliff, that they reunite, and can be a true family once again.
If you watched this movie, and weren't the biggest fan of it, I implore you to give it another shot, you might end up liking it a lot more than before.