Released on Sept. 30, 2022, artist Kid Cudi released a Netflix animated movie by the name of “Entergalactic,” accompanying his new album by the same name.  Based in New York City, it follows a soon-to-be comic artist by the name of Jabari voiced by Scott Mescudi. With a pleasing visual style and a soundtrack made by Kid Cudi, the film held a lot of promise to be delivered on.

The movie starts with the main character called Jabari moving into his brand new apartment, with the sole purpose of getting a comic book based on his original character by the name of “Mr. Rager.” After setting up his apartment he leaves to grab chinese food on his BMX bike and runs into his ex Carmen. The two briefly catch up and a date is agreed upon. It immediately cuts to Jabari’s apartment with his two friends, Jimmy and Ky, saying that she only talked to Jabari because he’s on route to having loads of money and lives in a fancy New York apartment. 

Ignoring what his friends said, he texts Carmen later that night to go out partying. After lots of drinks, Jabari wakes up in her bed with a clearer head and tries to get out as fast as possible, saying that they should just be friends. Upset at this, Carmen sees him out in a bad mood. This movie is split into six parts with this being the first one. This part introduces the characters and setting in memorable ways either through visuals or the way the characters are portrayed. However, one thing I noticed pretty fast is that the visuals can be choppy at times but not so much that it’ll ruin the whole experience. 

Chapter Two starts off with Jabari and his friends going party hopping. After a long accompanying montage, it immediately jumps to Jabari being asleep at the desk of his new job at “Cosmic Comics”. A quick facetime with Jimmy is cut short when Jabari’s new coworker called Len comes in, gifting Jabari a “worry plant” and talks about Mr. Rager. Len says that Jabari’s character is too street for Cosmic Comics and that he should change it. The worry plant grew rapidly as a sped up montage of Jabari in his office starts playing with it eventually ending in him falling asleep at his desk again. He has a nightmare where a gigantic Mr. Rager is chasing him down and trying to kill him in any way possible, only to be saved by a color swapped version of Mr. Rager, the version that Len is implying should be the final draft. He gets woken up and heads home to lay on his couch. 

Someone ringing his doorbell makes him hear a party happening next door that got on his nerves. He heads over to track down the host in order to tell them to keep it down. Jabari immediately notices that the attire for this party is very formal and feels out of place in his yellow shorts and white tee. He is clearly looking for someone and he bumps into a guy who tries talking to him and it starts becoming a problem. Just before it turns into one, the owner of the party and likely new love interest called Meadow walks over. I say likely because upon walking over she had angelic music playing and bright lights behind her. He doesn’t want to be a buzzkill so Jabari says he just wanted to see what was up. He goes home for the night. It feels like this chapter didn’t have much sorting in any terms of a general theme or importance, it just established some new things of the story and called it good. 

Chapter three starts with Jabari waking up to Meadow at his door. He insults her music taste in a joking way and they plan to go to lunch at her favorite one star diner. They talk and it is revealed that Meadow is a photographer and is having her work put into a museum very soon. She is also a very big fan of Mr. Rager before Jabari tells her that he’s the creator. He also tells her that Mr. Rager is getting a comic book soon and this makes Meadow seem a tad bit off. Apparently Cosmic Comics has a reputation for having its writers stray far from the original vision of their characters. Their day out ends at the doors of each respective apartment. Meadow is getting ready for a work outing with her manager Reed, the guy Jabari bumped into at the party. Reed’s purpose at this party is to sell Meadow’s work, and almost immediately Reed is swept away by an old associate. By pure coincidence, Jabari and his friend are also at this party, and after quickly agreeing that they were bored Jabari and Meadow left on a mongoose bicycle. Progression of the story is going as it should be, admittedly kind of predictable but that’s not a terrible thing. 

Chapter 4 was mostly Jabari’s friends giving their input about their situation, but both Jabari and Meadow unknowingly agreed that dating neighbors is a terrible idea, but this was immediately thrown out as soon as they both went home. Following this was a long series of dates in a montage spanning several months. Both have met each other’s friends, and they became more and more part of their daily routines. All is well until one night after they both fell asleep, Jabari’s ex Carmen sent a text that woke up Meadow, and she immediately thought they had been together the day before. The context of why she sent the text feels pretty shoe-horned in but it makes sense that somehow conflict would need to be introduced. Without it, the next hour or so would be not very entertaining

Chapter 5 throws us back to the day before, where we see that Jabari was with Carmen yesterday, but it was to get rid of a rat that was in her kitchen. They both ran out screaming but Jabari had left his sweatshirt on her kitchen table. It cuts back to the present where Jabari is venting to his friend Jimmy about the text that he is positive Meadow had seen. He stops by to get his sweatshirt and also to tell Carmen never to do that again because he is dating the girl that saw it. Carmen gets upset at this because she got turned away by Jabari for not wanting a relationship. Jabari goes home and catches Meadow leaving her apartment and tries to explain that it wasn’t like that but Meadow won’t hear him out. The conflict is growing and growing as the movie continues and it is doing so in a way that makes sense which honestly I didn’t expect from this movie.

Chapter 6, the last chapter, has Meadow in a taxi lost in thought after seeing the text. She is getting dinner with Reed as well as a lot of people wanting to buy her work. Nothing important happens at the dinner, but on the way into her apartment she hesitates to knock on Jabari’s door. She decides against it, and a montage of both of them struggling with their everyday lives plays out. Jabari has begun avoiding going into their apartments at the same time. He found out later that night that his comic officially has the greenlight for production and wants to text Meadow but decided not to. The following day, Jabari’s sister visits and tells him to fix everything before he loses the opportunity. It is now the night of Meadow’s art display and is secretly hoping that Jabari will show up. After giving a speech to a crowd of people she briefly saw him on a McDonald’s billboard. He graffitis it in a way that hints about the diner they went on their first date and she goes. They both see each other there, and the movie ends.  

So what were my general thoughts on the whole experience? It was kind of average really. The only thing that really grabbed my attention was the animation style. It reminded me of Spiderman: Into the Spider Verse which is my second favorite movie ever, so that was a pretty large piece as to what made it above average. The story was moderately entertaining throughout, it never had a real mind numbingly boring moment but it never reached a point where I thought something happened that was so crazy I’d remember it after the scene would end. So for a final score overall, I’d have to give Entergalactic a score of 3 / 5.