a desperate resuscitation of "xD random" humor as a half-assed attempt to assuage the spooky scary nihilism of the generations most likely to die in the climate apocalypse, the most depressing facet of which is how cartoonishly well it seems to be working. despite my obvious bitterness, I would be totally fine with this if it had the cacophonous presentation promised by its lofty premise for more than a minute max of its total runtime, or possessed any rhythm or sense of impact outside of the first action sequence. instead, the film continuously dodges theme, tension, and proper character development with limp nonsequiturs and dry exposition about the mechanics of said limp nonsequiturs even though they're nigh indistinguishable from playground battles with forcefields and forcefield-penetrating swords and swordproof forcefields and so on. it's a seemingly endless repetitive cycling of a handful of tepid possibilities, leaving the actually visually and conceptually compelling ones mostly for individual frames in a single brief montage, with one exception lasting a whole twenty seconds or so before reverting to the post-MCU wallpaper dotted with cheap novelties dripfed via PowerPoint presentation it's so mercilessly sandwiched between

the film tries desperately to evade analysis, probably because it immediately crumbles upon considering it. it's a multiverse containing infinite possibilities...except all the characters are ultimately the same person in all of them, to the degree that information from one universe can be used to exploit someone's weakness in another. this culminates in the protagonist invading the privacy of her opponents via other universes to solve their problems instead of fighting them, so I guess people who thought Amelie was cute and not an egomaniac who needs to mind her own goddamn business would be equally charmed by this nauseating fantasy of benevolent surveillance. but the idea of people being the same across the entire multiverse is such a bizarre strain of essentialist brainrot I can scarcely wrap my head around it. sure the entire multiverse could just be Evelyn's perception, but after two hours of a movie trying to gaslight me into believing I'm enjoying myself by gesturing towards the wacky vastness of this multiverse as if the alienation it exudes is self-evidently charming, this would be akin to an admission that it should've been called Nothing, Nowhere, Never, or: An Unpleasant Reminder That People Watch TomSka

the grand resolution is Evelyn choosing the universe where she gets audited over every other possibility and to demonstrate her growth as a character she now listens to the IRS agent and treats her with the respect such a glorious position warrants! which means the shit I just endured that the film itself screamed the word "fun" about at deafening volumes until I couldn't hear myself think actually can't exist because it would undermine the precious mundane complacency required for the planet to spin. amazing! apparently you're only allowed to consider alternate possibilities in which you would be happier if you plan to use some nonsense anti-reason to conclude that actually laundry and taxes are better. this is a deeply regressive text buried under its "life-affirming" exterior

I have never been so alienated in a movie theater as I was when people were actually laughing at shit like "what about if Ratatouille was a raccoon instead?". this "humor" makes Movie 43 look like The Big Lebowski