Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood is animated film from director Richard Linklater based on his childhood… sort of. Glen Powell, Zachary Levi, and Jack Black star.
In 1969 Houston, Texas, a ten year old boy is approached by a pair of NASA employees with an unexpected problem: the space capsule for the moon landing was made too small for an adult man by mistake and they need a kid to pilot the craft for its historic flight. The story follows the boy as he lives his life with his friends and family while secretly training for the legendary space flight.
The film released on Netflix on April 1st, 2022. The trailer can be seen here
.
Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood provides examples of:
- Conspiracy Theorist: One of Stanley's grandmothers, who tells tales that JFK is still alive (but comatose) overseas, and that overpopulation in the '70s will cause massive food shortages.
- Corporal Punishment: One of the anecdotes told by adult Stanley: It was common in the '60s to get spankings as punishment, even in school.
- Hand Wave: The explanation the film gives for why the capsule is child sized? Even the best mathematicians in the world aren’t going to get it right all the time.
- Irony: Stanley's dad is concerned that Stanley missed the historic event of astronauts walking on the moon because he was sleepy, not realizing that Stanley's already walked on the moon himself.
- Lighter and Softer: Easily the most tame of all of Linklater's rotoscoped projects. While Waking Life was a philosophical look at life and meaning with language sprinkled in and A Scanner Darkly being a Sci-fi Psychological Drug film, this is just a light coming of age film and the only one of his to not gather an R rating.
- Long List: Adult Stanley rattles off the massive amount of (in his opinion) great TV shows that came out in the '60s.
- Rotoscoping: The film uses a style of animating over live-action footage similar to previous Linklater projects such as A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life.
- The '60s: The narrator talks about how exciting it was to grow up in Houston in the 60s. The film shown does have the aesthetics of the time period (hair, fashion, technology, the interior of the boys house, and discussions of hippies).
- Slice of Life: While the film is marketed as the story of a boy who goes to the moon, that’s just a small part of the movie. The bill of the film is more about Stan narrating his life in Late-1960s Houston with his family and the highs and lows of growing up in that period as the world awaited the moon landing.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The first time Stanley goes in the centrifuge, he upchucks and it not only shows it, it freeze frames on the moment.
- Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: Stanley is told by the scientists that he cannot tell anyone about his mission, including his friends and family.
