Apollo 10 1/2: Les fusées de mon enfance

A new Richard Linklater movie got dropped onto Netflix about a month ago with little promotion or fanfare, which is a shame, because it was an enjoyable watch and there's quite a lot of good stuff in it.

It's a very, very nostalgic look back at being a kid in the late 1960s, and how it felt to grow up at the time of the Apollo space missions. It mixes comedy, animation, some documentary/historical footage (that's been animated over), voiceover, and even a little bit of fantasy to make for a breezy and largely entertaining watch.

It is more of a hangout/mood sort of movie, and whether it would've necessarily been better with a more focused story is hard to say. I didn't really mind, and it was only towards the very end where I felt like they started to stretch the fairly simple premise about as far as it could go.

And shortly after that point, it wraps up, coming in at about 90 minutes. There was a little repetition throughout, but most of it was really charming and enjoyable. It's a good watch- I think it's another overall solid film in Linklater's extensive, very strong filmography.

The title and trailer is definitely misleading by insinuating that this is some sort of space adventure. Granted, there are some fragments of space adventuring going on, but 95% of the film is basically a time capsule of the 60s which tells you all about what life was back then, filled to the brim with nostalgia.

As such it reminded me a bit of The Virgin Suicides in the romantic way it glorifies those long lost days, so stuffed with timely music, tv-shows and other pop-cultural tidbits that it successfully weaves a rose tinted memory of childhood, which will probably have most people create nostalgic connections to what all these references mean in their own life.

It's a great little trip down memory lane. I grew up in the late sixties and this little film really resonated with me. It depicted the era perfectly, although, since I didn't grow up in the Houston area, there were a few local things that didn't[t resonate with me. But overall, this is a fun family movie just bout everyone can enjoy! Great job on picking out the songs of the era too!

Stanley (Jack Black as adult and Milo Coy as child) comes of age in late 60s Houston, Texas against the backdrop of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing where the nostalgic reality mixes with childhood fantasy of being the first boy on the moon on a secret NASA mission for Apollo 10 ½.

Apollo 10 ½ is the latest film from Richard Linklater. Linklater had the idea back in 2004, inspired by his childhood growing up in 60s Houston with development taking shape in 2018. Originally intended to be a live-action film, when the project was set up at Netflix, Linklater instead decided to do the film as an animated project similar to his films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly due to the "playful" nature of animation. Linklater has created a nostalgic but true to life picture of growing up in the 1960s during the emergence of the space age.

Jack Black narrates the thoughts of our protagonist Stanley, and Black's delivery is pitch perfect in describing 60s Houston and the various contemporary trends, pop culture, and political and social events as witnessed by Stanley as a child. We get a sense of growing up during a particular time and place but as distorted from the nostalgic view of someone who was a child during those events. References are made to political and social strife of the time and the way in which it's relayed plays to true to how children experience those kinds of events. Even the landing of Apollo 11 covered in the film discusses the little seen outcry from those claiming it was a waste of money and resources that could've been applied elsewhere using archival footage interspersed with the narrative footage to give a glimpse into contemporary mindsets of the time. The animation is really solid per the standards set by Linklater's other films of this type and I think Linklater uses it effectively to evoke feelings of nostalgia mixed with the childish space fantasy that many kids fascinated with space travel have conjured themselves at one point or another. Along with the larger events we also get insight into familial and social dynamics of the era with fond reminiscence of the neighborhood pyromaniacs, the endless cycle of at least one kid having a cast, or various other mischief and shenanigans of the day.

Linklater has created a capture of the space race and the surrounding era in which it occurred through an honest but nostalgic lens. Jack Black's narration is sincere and credible and the capture of smaller childhood distractions intermixed with larger scale events in the background gives us the feeling of being there that only the best storytellers can give.

The best thing I can say about this one - and The Hand of God months ago - is that it made me want to a write a script about my youth and coming of age times.

Of course, I'm not American and this one is a very American culturally youth - and I would need to be a successful writer before having this script approved - but I felt this was much more about honouring a time and closing a chapter than about space. Linklater is a specialist about these stories and he knows how to keep us interested.