With the animated Netflix feature Apollo 10 1/2, Richard Linklater finally finds perspective
This review comes out of the 2022 media expo SXSW, where Polygon sent writers to look at the next wave of upcoming releases.
Richard Linklater specializes in nostalgia. His coming-of-age movies, from Dazed and Confused to Everybody Wants Some to Boyhood, immerse his audience in a specific place and era, capturing the nuances of its day-to-day life with characters that feel real. In his latest project, the rotoscoped Netflix film Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, that time and place is as much a fantasy as it is a personal, autobiographical reality. But in its more realistic elements, it explores how hope for the future and horror of the present blend in the eyes of one suburban child.
Apollo 10 1/2is set in spring 1969, just a few months before the real-world Apollo 11 mission landed the first explorers on the moon. Two NASA scientists, played by Zachary Levi and Glen Powell (recently the go-to actor for playing astronauts and NASA scientists) realize they built one of the Apollo modules too small for an adult. Their best solution? Recruit a fourth-grader named Stanley, who has so-so grades and no discernable special skills, to operate the module. This is a fantastical and even silly that someone like Spy Kids’ Robert Rodriguez might have spun out into a trilogy, but Linklater isn’t that interested in the story’s space-adventure possibilities. Before Stanley can go to space, his adult self (played by a rather earnest Jack Black) stops the story to embark on a side story, taking up more than half the movie’s runtime to paint a picture of Stanley’s childhood. Don’t worry, he says — he promises he’ll return to the NASA stuff later.
From there, Apollo 10 1/2 focuses on Stanley’s daily life, growing up just outside of
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