The animation technique known as rotoscoping has been around since the early 20th century when animator Max Fleischer pioneered it. Numerous filmmakers have experimented with the technique, including Richard Linklater. Starting with 2001’s Waking Life and then 2006’s A Scanner Darkly, Linklater’s use of rotoscoping would influence subsequent media, most notably the Amazon Original series Undone. Whilst he will be filming his adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Merrily We Roll Along over the course of several years, Linklater makes a return to animation, with Apollo 10½.
Originally conceived in 2004 and loosely based on the director’s own childhood, Linklater’s latest, which you can watch on Netflix, is an exploration of children’s fantasies about the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing. Told through the lens of Stan (played by Milo Coy, but also narrated by Jack Black as the adult Stan), we see his upbringing in a Houston suburb in the late sixties in a big family with a dad (Bill Wise) employed in a lowly admin job at NASA. Approached by two NASA officials (Glen Powell and Zachary Levi), Stan has been chosen to pilot a lunar module that is built too small for an adult to control and fly to the moon.
Though its premise sounds like a children’s film – of which Linklater is no stranger – this film is more in the realm of his acclaimed indie work that is not driven by plot, but the relatability towards his youthful cast. For the first half, which has a heavy dose of narration with Jack Black doing his best impression of Daniel Stern from The Wonder Years, you are watching a low-key account of what it was being a child during that period of the Space Age.
While this never reaches the dramatic nature of Linklater’s 2014 masterpiece Boyhood, Apollo 10½ retains a looseness with many fleeting moments, whether it is brief conversations or the varying ways the children play with one another. Stan may be the main character, but every member of his family gets to shine, from his oldest sister with the best taste in music and has great views towards politics, to his father who may be working for NASA, but is determined to get a cheap deal out of anything.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug and no doubt one that Hollywood has been weaponizing in recent years through franchise filmmaking. However, because of its loose narrative and how it uses the rotoscoped animation (covering parts that were shot in live-action, classic movies and news reports), the film revels in nostalgia that is quite addictive with the many mentions of board games, films and TV shows of that period.
However, the film’s greatest delivery of nostalgia is that sense of awe that a child would feel during the historic moment when we landed on the moon. Although there is an element of ambiguity towards Stan’s own Apollo moon landing, the film cleverly contrasts that whole sequence with the reality of him and his family watching the live broadcast of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the lunar surface. At the moment, Stan’s father is gleeful that his workplace has done something extraordinary and even the somewhat cynical oldest daughter has a smile on her face. As much as there were protests towards the whole point of going to the moon, as depicted here, Apollo 10½ feels uplifting through its presentation of one kid’s fantasy landing on the moon and the reality that mankind bear witness to.
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