In Apollo 10 1/2, Richard Linklater injects rocket fuel into childhood recollections
The director of Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly steeps his third animated outing in nostalgia and whimsy
Film Reviews Richard Linklater
The central premise of Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood takes off from the launchpad of half-remembered dreams and liberties taken with factual accounts. In this spirit, it’s easy to imagine Richard Linklater meeting with the deep-pocketed Netflix, and suggest a possible origin for this movie.
“It’s an animated NASA adventure,” says the director of box office winner School Of Rock. “What if, before Apollo 11, there was a clandestine trip to the moon with a precocious pre-teen?”
But as the streamer hands him a check (in a red envelope, of course), the laid-back Texas auteur of Slacker, Waking Life, and the Before trilogy is secretly licking his chops. Because he knows to slip in enough action-adventure footage to ensure a good trailer, but in reality Linklater will deliver his version of Fellini’s Amarcord or Woody Allen’s Radio Days: an essentially plotless but engaging and enriching recollection of childhood steeped in warmth, grace, honesty, and crystalline specificity.
Undoubtedly the scenario above did not happen (nor did NASA accidentally create a too-small lunar module ahead of Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins’ July 1969 launch), but you get a rascally “we got ‘em!” vibe five minutes into the film when Linklater slams the brakes on his space story to riff for an hour on suburban Houston in the late 1960s.
With Jack Black narrating, Apollo 10 1/2 moves with the speed of a Saturn V, reveling in the records, television shows, fashions, technology, and overheard conversations from this period of history. Stanley (Milo Coy) is a Linklater stand-in with several tweaks, like five older siblings and a father who works at NASA. Granted, Dad pushes pencils instead of launch buttons, but he’s still got a sense of pride about “beating the Russkies” on the trip to the moon.
As with Linklater’s 12-year production Boyhood, the glory is in the details, like focusing on the way kids kill time when it’s raining on a Saturday, or how to write songs for pushbutton telephones. A recurring gag has Black’s “older Stanley” acknowledging just how unsafe things seem from today’s point of view. (There’s lots of playing in traffic, fooling around with fireworks, and riding on the back of a flatbed truck.) But there’s neither a sense of scolding the past, nor grumbling that this is the way it oughta be. It’s just reporting.
As with anything this abundant in nostalgia, there’s bound to be some melancholy—indeed, the central concept of Stanley imagining himself as a lone visitor to Earth’s satellite works as a riff on untethering oneself from the cocoon-like comfort of childhood before entering adolescence—but Linklater pumps the breaks before anything can get too treacly. He acknowledges his white, middle-class, privileged milieu mostly by omission; commentators on television address the political issues of the day, with Dad rolling his eyes, older grad student sis whispering “right on,” and everyone else just remaining oblivious. Young Stan is far more interesting in babbling to his Little League pals about the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey than anything happening down on Earth.
Lest you think this movie is just a parade of signifiers, keep in mind Linklater’s body of work. His lodestar, Slacker, is far from the goof-off its title suggests, and remains a rich seam of philosophical thought. Same with the follow-up, Waking Life, which utilizes a similar animation technique here.
Apollo 10 1/2 isn’t quite as experimental in its look as that 2001 film (or Linklater’s second foray into the medium, 2006’s A Scanner Darkly) but the movie is abundantly playful, changing “film stocks” depending on what the family is watching (or ignoring at the drive-in) or where Stan’s imagination is roaming. There’s also the treasure of terrific needle-drops, from pop hits by The Monkees, The Archies, and The Association, to psychedelic explorations by Pink Floyd, Quicksilver Messenger Service and some choice cuts rummaged from Elektra Records’ Nuggets collection.
Meanwhile, there is no universal experience of childhood, but the film includes a scene of Stan and his siblings meeting the Abominable Snowman on the Alpine Sleigh Ride at Astroworld that captures the essence of still being young enough to get lost in imagination. For kids at Stan’s age, they don’t know it also might be the last time, but the way Linklater captures the exhilarating free fall of that moment should make every grown up smile.
48 Comments
Yuck, the rotoscoping is awful. Looks so instantly dated.
…in the sense that it looks like a movie from 2022?
man, what’s your problem with rotoscoping, it looks cool to me. Apollo 10 is by the same team that did this:
Dream Sequence | DREAM CORP LLC | adult swim – YouTube
I really and truly don’t understand what you have against rotoscoping.
I’m not a huge fan just because of the aesthetic, but rotoscoping has always been rotoscoping so I don’t understand the ‘dated’ complaint.Although this teaser looks fun, it almost has a King of the Hill vibe to it.
Sounds like you shouldn’t watch it, then.
Yeah, I’ll definitely give it a miss. Wish we just got the raw footage of A Scanner Darkly, the script was one of the best PKD adaptations ever but the visuals were so clunky. Didn’t find Waking Life worth the ‘scope either, it wasn’t nearly as psychedelic as it should’ve been. Sorry that I don’t find these crappy effects worth the effort, it just adds mud to otherwise fine performances.
Yep, you should spend your time on other things.
I’m really looking forward to this one. Curious if anyone will bring up the question of “why not send a short adult?”, but hey it’s a movie.
Yeah, if they could put a little person in the infamous pre-electronic “chess machine” The Turk, why not here?
I know theirs a lot of growns associated with a “NETFLIX ORIGINAL MOVIE” But i wonder if all comes crashing down in a few years and we’re all sitting around a trashcan fire will we be staying “yeah they really did take some creative risks and let Directors make their dream projects and also Birdbox”
This comment is the first time I’ve heard someone mention Birdbox and the first time I’ve thought about Birdbox in quite a while. That movie didn’t happen c’mon now.
Is the movie actually finished or did they just abruptly stop making it partway through?
Linklater is hoping the European box office will finance the second half, otherwise he’ll add some voiceover to the home video version explaining that Frodo did indeed reach Mordor.
Quite the Bakshi-handed compliment.
There’s no Alex Jones in this, I hope? It would be nice to be able to enjoy a Linklater film again.
…there’s one cameo in one movie holding you back from enjoying any of the others he’s made?
They just wanted to bring it up but couldn’t figure out a better way.
Two, actually. One in Waking Life and one in A Scanner Darkly. And yes, they do hold me back. Before, when all knew about Alex Jones was that he snuck into the Bohemian Grove and recorded whatever that ceremony was, I was cool with it. Since 2016, when I realized how much he helped fire up Trumpists and Trumpism, I haven’t been able to look at Linklater the same way again.
Until confirmed otherwise, I think you can proceed with the assumption that no, there will not be any Alex Jones in this one.
He is not in this one.
Listen, *I’m* an over sensitive type…but if two 90-second Alex Jones cameos in movies from an era when Jones was more conspiratorial blowhard than right-wing supplement fraudster has kept you from enjoying Everybody Wants Some! or Boyhood, you might need to do some work on compartmentalizing. Also, a simple google for the two will yield a plethora of articles in which Linklater reveals he actually didn’t know about the 2016 election and Jones’ future behavior in the early 2000s, and that he’s presently not a fan. Now go see this charming coming of age movie you little snowflake.
It helps to understand that when Linklater cast Jones in his movies, it’s because he just saw him as the local public access nutball. Jones simply wasn’t the the Sandy Hook-denying shartball he is now, or at the very least, we didn’t know that about him yet. “He was this hyper guy that we’d all kind of make fun of,” Linklater recently told . “I just thought he was kind of funny.”To put it another way, when Home Alone 2 first came out, Trump’s cameo was kind of funny, mostly because the kid had no idea who he was, and Trump himself expressed surprise that the kid didn’t recognize him. Watching it today however, well, ugh.
I had a feeling the whole NASA needing a kid to go to the Moon thing was just a daydream. I grew up in Houston when the Apollo program was in full swing, and I’m pretty sure every kid in town had that same daydream at least a couple of times.
It’s sound family friendly but wondering about the PG-13 rating. Anything to intense for younglings?
I suspect the PG-13-ness is due to the presence of hippies (as shown in the trailer). There may be a scene where you see them smoking joints or something.
Actually watching the trailer I bet that the PG-13 is because the mom smokes. It’s ridiculous how puritanical Hollywood and the ratings board has gotten over showing smoking on screen.
The observation that mom keeps her pack of cigarettes on the dashboard so captures that point in history.
Exactly. We watched the CNN documentary if Apollo 11 that in in HULU that is 100% footage from the time and people were smoking everywhere. That was just the 60s
Widespread lung cancer was a small price to pay for America’s greatest moments.
Yeah the little bit in Apollo 13 when they’re going around Mission Control with each station confirming go for launch and the Flight Surgeon is smoking always cracked me up.
There’s the one line out of the Day the Earth Stood Still (the Michael Rennie version, not the Keanu Reeves version) where the Doctor overseeing examining Klaatu is talking with another person on the case, and he’ says
Their life expectancy is a hundred and thirty.[Major takes cigarette out and lights it ] How does he explain that?
Marlboros, Kools and Luckys were often used as pacifiers in 1960s East Texas.
I could not see any justification for the PG-13 other than the smoking.
It’s Linklater, so there’s probably some casual swearing, along with the hippies Frank mentions
Nothing intense at all, however there is a briefly graphic scene of a kid breaking his arm (bone poking out and all). It’s not dwelt on too long but just something to be aware of as kids might not like it.Overall it’s a very gentle and fun watch though.
This animated film seems inspired by the rotoscope animation seen in Ralph Bakshi’s American Pop.
Or NASA could’ve trained a small woman for the mission. But I’m sure it’s all in his head and he grows up to be one of the creators of Fyre Fest.
AVClub really should allow downvoting comments.
“What if, before Apollo 11, there was a clandestine trip to the moon with a precocious pre-teen?”No, but thanks.
Saw this tonight on the big screen here in Toronto, loved it.
pumps the breaks
Adorable and sweet. Made me feel warm and happy, but also slightly sad. Also old.
LOVED this. Jack Black’s narration is perfect and the entire film was so comforting. A nice change.
Kinda neat that Jack Black narrates the movie, since his mom was an actual NASA engineer who worked in the Apollo program.
oh hey yah that is cool
I want to try and not by cynical about this, but something about Richard Linklater kind of makes me want to groan and roll my eyes and say, “Yes Richard, we get it: your adolescence to early adulthood and the times they occurred in were really awesome to you and you loved it. What else have you got to say?”I mean sure, Spielberg built an empire by refracting his golden yet bittersweet recollections of growing up a middle-class kid in the suburbs into an empire. But with him it was sort of a starting point to go onto different and more fantastical things. (Though I guess that’s what the whole moon mission angle is trying to accomplish here.) Linklater just sort of seems like David Wooderson from Dazed and Confused.
Not that anyone with see this because I’m in the permagreys, but
older grad student sis
It’s Mom who’s perpetually in grad school.