x_los | Review: "Entergalactic"

As long as animated films are throwing around comparisons to "Into the Spiderverse", "Entergalactic", with its bold, careful and situationally-adaptive animation, its urban setting, its attention to the roles race plays therein and its purposive, fulsome use of music, actually earns one. There's a real continuity of vibe, here. "Entergalactic" feels like an older cousin of "ItS". Initially I didn't realise that this was a project made in tandem with an album by Kid Cudi (who also voices the lead), which is substantively integrated into the film. The album feels varied in sound and tone, which helped me not really pick up on its extensive engagement with one artist. It worked for my partner, who was totally unfamiliar with Kid Cudi's work, and for me, who only knows the artist via a handful of hits.

This is a low-stakes romcom that is sometimes very funny and sometimes actually feels sexy, with a well-realised ensemble cast and environment that are as much the film's focus as its key relationship is. The lead's ex, Carmen (arguably the 'villain' of the piece), is basic in a fleshed-out, background way that simply exists rather than serving as a reason to discredit her. Carmen's goals are reasonable, so far as we know them. They just don't ultimately align with the protagonist's.

The leads' various issues regarding art and integrity are well-handled and feel like fair reflections on their respective industries, though it's kind of jarring to watch the romantic adventures of people who are really, unusually well-off for their cities in a way the film is conscious of, and draws attention to. Admittedly this feels weirder than it would with white rom com leads, whose privilege we're used to naturalising in the semi-fantastic contexts of film. But there's something kind of unappealing in this moment about how easily money comes to this cadre, and how little we know (or, and this is also a racialised question, can assume) about how they come by it. We're no longer in a situation to find designer shoe "Sex in the City"isms cute or easy to fully ignore in the way we collectively did when that series aired.

I don't know that it was a brilliant choice to end the story with the news bite about the dating site featured throughout being a fraud. That felt like a simpler 'authentic love is analogue' message than the rest of the film offered. (Unless we're supposed to derive from this that the 'plastics' the lead's friend is getting into involve this massive theft of credit card information?)

For some reason this film didn't absolutely sweep me off my feet, but I can't exactly pinpoint why: every aspect was well-done, and I respect it a lot. The thing I will remember most about this movie, however, is the joke about a couple on a first date fucking in the bathroom of the Ninja Restaurant. Katy and I were absolutely stunned to find that for fifteen solid years, there was a ninja themed restaurant in New York. Customers would dine in a private inn-styled room in a medieval Japanese village, and the servers would acrobatically stage their assassinations many times throughout the course of the meal. A meal that would consist not of like, udon or something, but instead of everything from dragon rolls to tacos to croquembouche. Anything, so long as it was on fire. Like Medieval Times, but the staff attacks you constantly. But also they serve you a croquembouche covered in fireworks. How could this have ever opened? How could it have ever closed?