Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood Review - A Beautiful Film We've Seen Before
Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood plays like an instructional manual for being a kid in the late sixties. Jack Black’s (School Of Rock) narration is oddly flat considering the performer's usual flare but it fits with the model of listing a movie's worth of facts. The animation at large will remind fans of A Scanner Darkly, but flashbacks and vignettes boast a similar yet noticeably different change that is more than welcome. Writer-director Richard Linklater (Boyhood) seems obsessed with making movies about himself as a youth, but the script of Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood has a trick or two up its sleeve.
Stan (Jack Black) is an average nine-year-old living in late-60s Texas. His sister works at Baskin-Robbins, his brother mows lawns, his dad works at NASA and so does Stan — at least for now. The “Apollo 10 1/2” has a design flaw built into its cockpit and only Stan can pilot the craft. Though this secret mission doesn’t get the recognition of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, he does still enjoy the highs of life as it is. Board games, sports, trips to Astroworld, watching TV, and listening to records with his family, to name a few.
Related: Is Apollo 10 1/2 Based On A True Story?
Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood is another entry into two of Linklater’s go-to choices: a film about a young, southern kid in Vietnam War era America, and animation. 2006’s A Scanner Darkly was revolutionary not only in its animation, but in the story it was telling through animation, and with the added bonus of actors one could see. Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood doesn’t have nearly the same storytelling chops, but it furthers Linklater's animation career by going backward. The best animation in the film is not with the
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