Richard Linklater’s Apollo 10 1/2 was always going to be fun. The trailer made that very clear, with Shazam (Zachary Levi) approaching a kid on a playground for a secret NASA mission, told in animated rotoscope, a form Linklater himself had used 16 years earlier in A Scanner Darkly. What I wasn’t prepared for was how romantic and heartfelt it would be.
Mission Control
Apollo 10 1/2 tells the story of Stanley, a fourth-grader who, based on his physical prowess on the school playground (he’s won the Presidential Physical Fitness Award three years running), is selected by NASA to take part in a secret test mission to the moon, ahead of Neil, and Buzz, and Michael. Why a fourth grader you might ask? Well, NASA had accidentally built the lunar module too small, and well, you don’t always get a perfect score on your math test every time do you? So shut up.
Admittedly I was a little apprehensive about the use of rotoscope again. Despite it being a fun movie, A Scanner Darkly’s animated rotoscope was a little too distracting for a story that itself was a little out there. Apollo 10 1/2 however never felt like a gimmick. The rotoscope art style was less realistic and more “animated,” and all of it blended beautifully with the background and setting.
Apollo 10 1/2 is a story told in flashback, as an adult Stanley (voiced by Jack Black) recounts his NASA adventures by setting up the era and what it meant growing up in the period. The first half of the movie is dedicated exclusively to that, and it really felt like watching Richard Linklater (who himself grew up in 1960’s Houston) recount what it must have been like for him, living through a time where the space race, and Vietnam, and Watergate were just around the corner.
In Apollo 10 1/2 the mood of the 60s is captured very much through rose tinted glasses. Here we are looking back at a bygone era where the promise of space was something so full of hope. Where the realities of war and societal disparity is all but ignored. Which isn’t to say that Apollo 10 1/2 pretends that none of the bad stuff happened, it just plays it as out of the grasp of this particular fourth-grader.
Guidance Is Internal
Apollo 10 1/2 is a beautiful story told that is well told. A romantic look back at a time when being American was idealised, and the realities of the world had yet to strike home. This is, after all, the story of a fourth grader who goes to the moon, a fourth grader who is, self-admittedly, not always truthful, and a little excitable in the imagination.
The 1960s are a time that is easily romanticised for those who didn’t live it; and I include myself in that. The idea of man going to the moon, a mere 66 years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, must have been intoxicating. There was hope for the future. This was just weeks before Woodstock, months before the anti-draft protests in March of 1970, and the Kent State University demonstration of May that year. This was America with a capital “A.” A land of promise and hope, epitomised by that groundbreaking achievement of Neil, and Buzz, and Michael getting to the moon. Apollo 10 1/2 perfectly captures that moment, all from the eyes of a young fourth grader who, as he tells it at least, gets to the moon first. In secret.
Apollo 10 1/2 is a beautiful, romantic, and heartfelt love letter to a more innocent time. If you were ever caught up in the space race, and wanted to relive that moment with your family, then this is the movie for you.
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