‘Entergalactic’ review: In Netflix movie, Kid Cudi turns new songs in an electrifying musical love story

Here is proof you can take something quite familiar and make it sing in ways that feel fresh, funny, warm and exhilarating.

The animated feature film “Entergalactic” on Netflix has a storyline straight out of the Rom-Com Playbook — I mean, our hero falls in love with a girl who literally lives next door. But the story is told with some of the most strikingly beautiful and memorably trippy visuals I’ve seen in a long time, augmented by a steady diet of infectious music by the film’s co-creator and star, Kid Cudi, with a finger directly on the pulse of millennial and Gen Z culture as experienced by young Black professionals.

This is a blazingly original piece of work, created by Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi and Kenya Barris, directed with great style by Fletcher Moules and essentially serving as a long-form video for Kid Cudi’s upcoming album, also titled “Entergalactic.” The fusion of music and narrative works wonderfully as we follow a group of well-drawn (in more ways than one), hilarious, likable and empathetic characters.

Set in a New York brimming with neon-rich shades of purple, maroon, yellow and orange (the style is reminiscent of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”), “Entergalactic” stars Kid Cudi as Jabari, a street artist who has recently landed a major deal to turn his graffiti creation “Mr. Rager” into a series of comic books. Shortly after moving into his new, spacious, loft apartment in Manhattan, Jabari runs into his ex-girlfriend Carmen. (In one of the film’s many clever visual touches, the logo on a FedEx truck morphs into a graphic telling us Carmen is the “Ex.”)