I love Richard Linklater’s films. Their authentic feel derives from the fact that Linklater has a poet's eye and ear for the way people communicate with each other.
“Apollo 10 1/2” is not really a space movie as much as it is about childhood in mid-to-late ‘60s Texas. So it comes as no surprise that Linklater directed this highly personal film about growing up. Playing like a slice of life, albeit in dreamy rotoscope animation, Linklater’s film feels like a time machine back to when things were much simpler in America.
Very light on its feet, and oddly recalling “The Wonder Years” in its heavy usage of narration, this is a vivid portrait of a very specific time and place in American history. The July 20, 1969 moon landing might be semi-referred to in the title, but this is very much about Linklater’s banal day-to-day life and the suburban families who lived around his.
In this regard, the film is drastically different from Linklater’s other rotoscope wonders, 2001’s dreamily philosophical “Waking Life”, and the twisty sci-fi of “A Scanner Darkly.” “Apollo 10 1/2” is much more intimate and autobiographical in its intentions.
Linklater casts his boyhood self as Stan (Milo Coy), who daydreams he is part of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. His dad works at NASA, in the shipping and receiving department, but maintains a fervent passion for the space program. Living with his parents, and five older siblings, Stan/Linklater spent the summer of 1969 experiencing JFK’s moon speech, going to the Astrodome, making prank calls with the house’s first push-button phone, and watching America lose a war in Vietnam War.
Like Linklater's very best movies, “Apollo 10 1/2” plays akin to a slice-of-life rumination, avoiding forced drama and instead opting for the beauty of moments. And yet, it never feels overtly nostalgic as you are firmly planted in the suburbia world Linklater creates with his camera and painted-on animation.
By the time the actual Apollo 11 blast-off arrives in the film’s finale, and the family sits around the TV set to watch Walter Cronkite deliver the play-by-play, you’ve fully been immersed in a surreal time capsule, unlike any other seen before. [B+]