Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood

This year's Netflix produced APOLLO 10 1/2: A SPACE AGE CHILDHOOD is one of the warmest recollections I've seen in some time.   Writer/director Richard Linklater again looks back at his halcyon youth, and for the third time in his career employs the use of overlaid animation, a type of rotoscoping previously seen in WAKING LIFE and A SCANNER DARKLY.  Here the post production work is not as wavy and vertigo inducing, which in hindsight might've been appropriate for a film about a young man who is selected to take a mission to space before the famous Apollo 11 mission that landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in July of 1969.  

Stanley is a ten year old living in suburban Houston.  His dad works for NASA as an administrator, which Stanley doesn't think is cool enough; he will even lie to his classmates about his role during show and tell.  But otherwise life is pretty swell.  All the usual kid things, tinged with period specifics like riding your bike behind the fog of a DDT truck and ducking and covering under your desk during a nuclear war drill.  Linklater does not drive his film with plot, but rather a litany of details about what TV shows he watched and what his mother prepared in the kitchen (those damned jello molds). I especially liked the subtleties, as when we see one of his siblings (all nicely sketched and acted) using a lowered ironing board as a TV tray, an example of how frugal his parents were.

APOLLO 10 1/2, which is narrated by the adult Stanley (voiced by Jack Black), is not an attempt at a letter perfect autobiography, but rather a warm bit of nostalgia for a simpler time.  When the world events were not as threatening to young eyes.  As we see images of Vietnam, Stanley remarks that war and other questionable behavior just seemed liked what adults did.  Linklater's insight from both a child and adult's perspective is positively magnetic.  

Part of the film follows Stanley as he's recruited by two guys from NASA who explain that they mistakenly designed their capsule too small and want to try it out before the official mission.  Stanley will spend the next month training in the "Vomit Comet" and underwater just like real astronauts do.  The government will create a ruse - complete with photos - to Stanley's family, showing him at a fake summer camp.   Stanley will indeed take a trip to the moon.  

Don't think about this too hard; this is a story narrated by someone with rose colored glasses.   There's a telling quote from Stanley's mother as she carries him to bed after he falls asleep during the moonwalk...

You know how memory works.  Even if he was asleep, he'll someday think he saw it all.

Linklater saw enough to give us this lovely film, unsurprisingly accompanied by lots of  well selected '60s tunes.  It will likely spur your own nostalgia, and prove to be a real treat for those who remember the time and those who wish they had been there.