Apollo 10 1/2: Les fusées de mon enfance

I didn't grow up in 1960s Houston. I grew up in 1980s Newcastle Upon Tyne. So a rather different environment.

However, I was still taken in by the more nostalgic theme. I don't know why but for some reason its fun to relate events in a movie to your own youth.

Like falling asleep in the back of the car and waking up in my bed, making prank calls (at least until '1471' was brought to our attention), comically sadistic teachers, brutal but awesome playground games, being blissfully unaware of any environmental hazard (breathing in smoke from a gigantic bonfire all day in your mate's garden) , daft TV programs, playing 40-a-side football in the street, my Nana visiting with her 'views', obscure board games, 6 hour games of monopoly, disappointing packed lunches...and so on.

There is in fact not much of a story to this movie, just an opportunity to forget the worries of the present and remember that you had a youth, stuff happened, and you survived. The 'kid going to the moon' was very much a side story.

The best thing I can say about this one - and The Hand of God months ago - is that it made me want to a write a script about my youth and coming of age times.

Of course, I'm not American and this one is a very American culturally youth - and I would need to be a successful writer before having this script approved - but I felt this was much more about honouring a time and closing a chapter than about space. Linklater is a specialist about these stories and he knows how to keep us interested.

Stanley (Jack Black as adult and Milo Coy as child) comes of age in late 60s Houston, Texas against the backdrop of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing where the nostalgic reality mixes with childhood fantasy of being the first boy on the moon on a secret NASA mission for Apollo 10 ½.

Apollo 10 ½ is the latest film from Richard Linklater. Linklater had the idea back in 2004, inspired by his childhood growing up in 60s Houston with development taking shape in 2018. Originally intended to be a live-action film, when the project was set up at Netflix, Linklater instead decided to do the film as an animated project similar to his films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly due to the "playful" nature of animation. Linklater has created a nostalgic but true to life picture of growing up in the 1960s during the emergence of the space age.

Jack Black narrates the thoughts of our protagonist Stanley, and Black's delivery is pitch perfect in describing 60s Houston and the various contemporary trends, pop culture, and political and social events as witnessed by Stanley as a child. We get a sense of growing up during a particular time and place but as distorted from the nostalgic view of someone who was a child during those events. References are made to political and social strife of the time and the way in which it's relayed plays to true to how children experience those kinds of events. Even the landing of Apollo 11 covered in the film discusses the little seen outcry from those claiming it was a waste of money and resources that could've been applied elsewhere using archival footage interspersed with the narrative footage to give a glimpse into contemporary mindsets of the time. The animation is really solid per the standards set by Linklater's other films of this type and I think Linklater uses it effectively to evoke feelings of nostalgia mixed with the childish space fantasy that many kids fascinated with space travel have conjured themselves at one point or another. Along with the larger events we also get insight into familial and social dynamics of the era with fond reminiscence of the neighborhood pyromaniacs, the endless cycle of at least one kid having a cast, or various other mischief and shenanigans of the day.

Linklater has created a capture of the space race and the surrounding era in which it occurred through an honest but nostalgic lens. Jack Black's narration is sincere and credible and the capture of smaller childhood distractions intermixed with larger scale events in the background gives us the feeling of being there that only the best storytellers can give.

A new Richard Linklater movie got dropped onto Netflix about a month ago with little promotion or fanfare, which is a shame, because it was an enjoyable watch and there's quite a lot of good stuff in it.

It's a very, very nostalgic look back at being a kid in the late 1960s, and how it felt to grow up at the time of the Apollo space missions. It mixes comedy, animation, some documentary/historical footage (that's been animated over), voiceover, and even a little bit of fantasy to make for a breezy and largely entertaining watch.

It is more of a hangout/mood sort of movie, and whether it would've necessarily been better with a more focused story is hard to say. I didn't really mind, and it was only towards the very end where I felt like they started to stretch the fairly simple premise about as far as it could go.

And shortly after that point, it wraps up, coming in at about 90 minutes. There was a little repetition throughout, but most of it was really charming and enjoyable. It's a good watch- I think it's another overall solid film in Linklater's extensive, very strong filmography.

I grew up in Houston from mid '50s to mid '70s and the nostalgic details in Linklater's great new animated feature was almost overwhelming. I'm sure many people will appreciate it, especially the visual style, but for us Space City kids, it is a real treasure trove of memories. Only one goof: the Majestic Theater did not look like that and was quite the opposite of the run-down theater he described. It was a magnificent movie palace in the heart of downtown.