I know I’m late to the game, but I finally got around to watching Everything Everywhere All at Once last weekend, and my mind is still spinning. I’m going to need some time to process it, and I may need to watch it again.

Just the fact that a movie like this could get made and be successful seems like a good sign. It’s not like anything else. It’s not a franchise, a sequel, or based on something else. It’s wildly original and creative, simultaneously silly and profound. I hope that Hollywood learns something from this and is more open to things that are totally different.

It’s hard to describe, but it’s basically the story of a middle-aged immigrant woman whose life is kind of a mess with a failing business and failing relationships with her husband and daughter who finds out during an IRS audit meeting that the fate of the multiverse relies on her. She has to connect with other versions of herself in universes where things worked out differently to learn the things she needs to know to save the multiverse (while doing a lot of martial arts in an office building).

I’ve seen a lot of commentary about this being about the generation gap and relationships between parents and children, but to me it was largely about midlife crisis, reaching the age when you realize that most of your choices have already been made and some opportunities are gone forever. Even if you started now and worked really hard, you’d never be able to do or be some of the things you dreamed of. The idea of being able to visit a universe where you actually did those things and you can see how your life would have worked out if you had is fascinating. I’ve always loved “what if” stories. In a weird way, this is like Sliding Doors on steroids and a whole lot of mind-altering substances, only our heroine is conscious of all the parallel timelines as she jumps in and out of them.

I can see why so many of the actors involved won Oscars because they’re all playing multiple versions of their characters who are distinctly different and yet still fundamentally the same, and all the while they have to remain human enough to ground this crazy story. I love that it resurrected Ke Huy Quan’s acting career. Even as a kid, he had so much potential, and it’s sad that he wasn’t able to find good roles. He’s so moving in this movie while also being hilarious.

I see a lot of movies that make me feel like I could have come up with that story (or have come up with a story like that), but I could never in a million years have imagined coming up with this.