‘Entergalactic’ Has Me Believing In Love Again

The new Netflix animated movie about balancing love and success is well worth your time.

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The best date I ever had was in 2021. It was in the early phase of the pandemic, before the vaccines, and we decided to meet outside and go for a walk even though it was February and freezing in New York. As we walked and talked, I thought about how well the date was going and wondered if she felt the same. I looked for those subtle clues of interest: arm touches, personal stories, a hand on my shoulder while we shared a laugh. When my dog would pull me slightly toward the grass, my date would go off course with us and keep close. When we’d approach a puddle of slush, we’d walk around it on the same side instead of splitting the obstacle.

We ended up walking for several hours with my dog, who was happy for the longest walk of her life. We wandered through Riverside Park. We walked along the Hudson River. We stopped at a bookstore on the Upper West Side. And we talked the whole time.

At one point, we talked about the date itself and how well it was going, and she described our romantic phase in a way that I don’t think I’ll ever forget: She called it the “Look, a bird” phase. It’s when a date is going so well that you don’t want the conversation to end, so you’re willing to fill the silence with just about anything to keep it going, including the bird that just flew by. The bird doesn’t have to be beautiful. It just has to be there, to exist, to help you extend the moment a bit longer and bridge the gap between one conversation topic and the next.

Look at that bird. Oh, that reminds me …

The new Netflix movie Entergalactic captures that feeling. I didn’t want its date scenes to ever end. I didn’t want the movie itself to end.

Created by Kid Cudi, who also made the soundtrack (which I’m listening to right now), Entergalactic is an animated romantic comedy that follows an artist named Jabari (Kid Cudi) at a crossroads in his life. We meet him as he’s moving into a new apartment, a rather upscale Manhattan loft that he can afford courtesy of his new job. He’s beginning to gain some success in his career; after working as a shoe salesman and a political-graffiti artist, he lands his own book series with an illustrious comic publisher. But as his career grows, so does his worry about losing himself and compromising his work for a publisher who is rumored to be “all about bright, lite, and white.” When he runs into his ex-girlfriend Carmen, and later his neighbor Meadow, he begins his journey of learning to balance love and success. Entergalactic isn’t quite a coming-of-age movie—Jabari and Meadow are both established, confident adults nearing the peak of their careers—but it is about personal growth as a single person balancing relationships and careers, and maintaining a sense of self.

Jabari and Meadow cross paths three times before they actually meet. They finally have their meet-cute when Jabari goes next door to complain about the noise from Meadow’s party. The next day, Meadow asks to take him to lunch as an apology, and they go on an unplanned date, feeling each other out for signs of interest. In one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, Meadow touches Jabari’s hand across the table, and he briefly looks at it. A moment later, they’re leaning in toward each other—not to kiss, but just to be closer together.

The rest turns into a perfect New York City date with details too wonderful to spoil here, but it’s an example of one of the several date scenes that Entergalactic does so well. In a different scene, a couple transition from talking at a quiet bar to dancing on a loud dance floor to walking alongside each other down an empty street. After the best encounters, characters are depicted floating through space without a care in the world.

Netflix

The next time Meadow and Jabari see each other after that first date is at an art party. Jabari is there with his friend Ky, who warns him against dating a neighbor. But Ky changes his advice when he sees Meadow.

“That’s my neighbor,” Jabari tells Ky. “The one I was telling you about! She’s standing at the bar!”

“Oh, nah, she bad,” Ky says. “Fuck everything I said about neighbors.”

Meadow’s best friend, Karina, who is pregnant and married, also tries to push Meadow toward Jabari by sharing how she had slept with her husband on their first date. (Karina’s comedy alone is worth watching Entergalactic for; she has a way of turning every conversation toward her impulses for food or sex.)

Jabari and Meadow are both reluctant to date each other despite their feelings, but you can imagine where it goes: romance, and then a curveball that threatens the potential of their relationship. Entergalactic thrives in that potential and captures what it feels like to be in the perfect phase of an early relationship—when you’re in love with an idealized version of the person you met and indulging the hope of what a great date represents: that your perfect partner exists, and you found them. And you don’t want it to end.

Look at that bird.

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Thanks to everyone who responded to my last Humans Being about Ramy and the kinds of travel experiences that shape our worldviews. My favorite response came from Elmar, who told a story about traveling when they were younger:

When I was in my late teens, I volunteered in the laboratory of a small Finnish Lutheran mission hospital in the far north of Namibia, a rural area close to the Angolan border. I was invited to the home of one of the lab’s staff members for Sunday lunch … I met her family and we had some soft drinks and millet beer while chatting, then we sat down to lunch: sorghum (the local staple), greens, and a couple of chickens that had been freshly slaughtered and grilled. I was served a drumstick and ate it the way I had eaten chicken my whole life: held it in my hand and bit off the meat until the bone was almost bare. And I made a point of eating all the sorghum and greens on my plate—my German grandmother, who raised me and drilled into me the sparsity she had suffered during and after the war, would never let me leave the table unless my plate was clean. I took another sip of my millet beer and noticed my friend from the lab looking at me with a mixture of sadness, consternation, and anger. She whispered, “why don’t you finish your meat?” I didn’t understand what she meant at first. Then I looked around. Not a single plate had a whole chicken bone on it, never mind one that still had cartilage or flesh attached to it. A few of the other guests were actively chewing their bones and sucking out the marrow. To this day, I remember the feeling that struck me like a slap in the face: The shame, the feeling of stupidity, the amplified awareness of the complexities of race, poverty, class, and cultural differences that were playing out at that Sunday lunch.