QUICK HIT: Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood [2022]

December 27, 2022

2–3 minutes

Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood, Netflix, Netflix Animation, Richard Linklater

Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 97 minutes
Release Date: March 25th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: Netflix Animation / Netflix
Director(s): Richard Linklater
Writer(s): Richard Linklater

I guess I was what you’d call a fabulist, which is just a nicer way of saying persistent liar.

With the 1969 moon landing on the horizon, NASA suddenly realizes that they’ve built their module too small. So, instead of scrapping what they have and waiting for the new one to be built, they decide to recruit a fourth grader in a neighboring town of Houston to train and go up first while his friends and family all believe he’s attending summer camp. Why did Stan (Milo Coy) get picked? Gumption. And imagination. Because none of this actually happened. But for a self-described habitual liar (in hindsight courtesy of Jack Black’s narration), it’s pretty cool to think that it did.

It’s a neat premise to build around and Richard Linklater does exactly that for about thirty minutes of his latest rotoscope-aestheticized animated film Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood. He gets to wax on about his own childhood during the space boon of the 60s while taking his stand-in through the rigors of astronaut training at the guidance of Kranz (Zachary Levi) and Bostick (Glen Powell). The journey is fun even if it’s just a one-to-one reenactment of the real lunar landing with a kid in place of Neil Armstrong—so much so that most of the mission is cross-cut with Apollo 11 as Stan’s family watches on TV.

The other hour of runtime is a nostalgia bomb, for better or worse. It’s a laundry list of TV shows, rock bands, and Houston destinations of a bygone era. None of it has any bearing on the main throughline beyond the fact that asking a kid to go to space brings with it the reality that kids live simple lives full of wants and desires that are attuned to the sole purpose of pleasure. We’re watching Linklater’s home movies through the fictional prism of a childhood fantasy. It’s the manifestation of our universal penchant to imagine ourselves as a part of current events. Landing on the moon was a communal experience and Apollo 10½ succeeds when dealing with that phenomenon. The mileage of the rest’s time capsule categorization varies.