Review: Netflix’s Entergalactic

Overview: Jabari, a trendy millennial graffiti artist has just moved to Manhattan, to make his character Mr. Rager, the tall, dark, violent gunman with hair like a billowing nuclear explosion, into the star of a comic book. He hangs out with his friends, smokes pot, and attends wild parties. While trying and failing to sleep one night, he meets his neighbor, the photographer party girl Meadow, and love quickly blooms between the two of them. The two of them try to navigate their love as their friend circles pressure them to escalate their relationship, and they deal with all of the drama that comes with a relationship.

Our Take: Bold is the first word I’d use to describe how this movie looks. It’s absolutely gorgeous. The characters are all sharp and angular, and the film is saturated with bright neon colors. The aesthetic is so bold and memorable, so uncompromising and beautiful. The animation is well done too. The characters animate with realistic weight and movement. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was all filmed with real actors and then animated with rotoscoping. It gives it a very unique look unlike most other animated films. It’s also not afraid to tinker around with other art styles, particularly in flashbacks as characters reminisce about their love lives. These sequences are given as much care and love as the main animation, and it’s a very nice change of pace from the pseudo-realistic look the rest of the movie has.

There’s a surprising amount of action early on. They make a point early on of Jabari being really good with his bicycle, so the creators couldn’t resist the opportunity to make a montage of him doing lots of cool tricks. There’s also a very bombastic sequence of Jabari having a nightmare where he battles a giant monstrous version of Mr. Rager. I absolutely loved that sequence, but these more exciting sequences tend to disappear in the second half of the film. There’s totally room in the climax for another exciting action setpiece, but I totally understand them not going in that direction, might ruin the tempo of things.

There’s a large focus on music too. The aforementioned action sequences are all set to popular rap songs, in addition to scenes of Jabari going to wild parties or him having passionate sex with Melody. I don’t have much taste for music, especially not the type of music that’s featured in Entergalactic, but I thought the songs were a very important part of the film, one which it would be much lesser without. It gives it it’s own special vibe, and figuring out what fits your unique tastes is a major theme of the film.

Entergalactic is divided into six chapters, with each getting their own animated title card. This is weird, but not bad, and looking more into it’s production reveals that they’re probably a leftover of when Entergalactic was intended as a whole television series instead of a movie. I still like them. The story flows well and is easy to follow with this setup. 

One of the major recurring themes of the film is that of authentic love. There’s recurring mention made of a dating app that much of the supporting cast uses, and they mention that it works poorly and is a piece of crap, with that subplot getting a very nice payoff that I don’t desire to spoil. I think this suits Entergalactic well. It’s a bold, stylish, sexy movie, that doesn’t want to compromise on anything, and I absolutely love that about it. It’s not some cynically made cash grab from a bunch of heartless suits, it’s an authentic tale full of love and passion, and one I whole-heartedly recommend.