Put this one next to Bo Burnham’s Inside for borderline “does this count as a movie?” picks for reviews. Whatever; it’s a feature-length production on Netflix, and I counted Crazed Gender Twisters From Planet X, which was as much of a series as this is, so yeah, this is a movie review. It’s one I got curious about when it first popped up as, while I’ve never rated Kid Cudi that highly as a rapper (Kids See Ghosts slaps tho), he’s been showing up in movies that I’ve really liked in recent years like Bill & Ted Face The Music, X from earlier this year, and even making for the best (as in the only good) part of Don’t Look Up alongside Ariana Grande. And I’m on a bit of a musical kick at the moment, so let’s see what he’s cooked up here.
Well, it’s billed as a visual companion to his latest album of the same name, similar to what Beyoncé has done with her last handful of albums… and honestly, this is the kind of music that feels like it needs visual accompaniment. Don’t get me wrong, I like the spacious, blunted vibes of these songs, and when it gets into the romantic material, it fits well with the story being told. It’s just that these songs work best as vibes, and I can’t say that a whole lot of it stuck out to me beyond their inclusion in this film series thingy.
As for the animation, DNEG adds to their animation resume alongside Ron’s Gone Wrong and it’s a solid addition at that. There’s a lot of Into The Spider-Verse inspiration here in the trippy colour palette and cel-shaded textures for the characters and the environments, and when it gets into the more imaginative set pieces, it looks great. But I find myself questioning some of this for the same reason I did with similar moments of inspiration that showed up in Puss In Boots: The Last Wish; namely, the use of intentionally-choppy framerate. Now, in Into The Spider-Verse, that was done specifically as a visual aid for Miles’ character arc, smoothing out at the same rate that Miles himself did as the next Spider-Man. Here, though, it shows up sporadically just in the conversation scenes, and it seems to be done purely for the aesthetics. The effect it leaves makes it look like the scene is still being rendered in real-time, and because everything else looks so polished, it sticks out in a bad way, at least to me.
But that’s easy enough to get past after a while, though, which is a good thing because this is a rom-com with a lot of dialogue-centric scenes. And most of them work pretty well, if reliant on the mainstream rom-com formula (including my pet hate with the third-act break-up… urgh), showing the characters dealing with the social mores to do with dating in the era of dating apps. The budding relationship between street artist Jabari (Kid Cudi) and photographer Meadow (Jessica Williams) is very sweet to watch unfold, and aside from that aforementioned contrivance, I like how it was handled on both sides. It's all very post-When Harry Met Sally, sure, but there’s plenty of charm here and the individual moments are nice and memorable. The vagina party, the flashbacks to past romantic encounters done in different animation styles, Macaulay Culkin as skater Downtown Pat hitting way harder than I thought he would; there’s some bangers in here.
And when that connects with the animation style, it comes across as a variant on the old ‘love as drugs’ metaphor, showing both as being able to alter a person’s perception of their surroundings. It’s laced with the isolation angle that’s been Kid Cudi’s brand since way back with Day 'N’ Nite, added on here to show the lonely stoner finding someone else to free his mind at night with. The regular interjections from Mr. Rager, voiced by Keith David, add to the extradimensional effect. While I still have some reservations about parts of the animation, the Spider-Verse aesthetic overall is a solid fit. It’s an entertaining feature that pairs otherworldly animation with down-to-earth stoner comedy. It admittedly works better as its own creation than as an accompaniment for the album, but if this gets a follow-up, I’m still down.
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