Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022)

Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022)

PG-13

netflix

A wistful and playful throwback to the turbulent 1960s

7.2

Movie

Netherlands, United States
English
Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Drama
2022
RICHARD LINKLATER
Bill Wise, Brent A. Riggs, Brian Villalobos
98 min

What it's about

A man narrates stories of his life as a 10-year-old boy in 1969 Houston, weaving tales of nostalgia with a fantastical account of a journey to the moon.

The take

Narrated by the familiar voice of Jack Black, Apollo 10 ½ is a throwback story told with admirable specificity and imagination. Black plays a grown-up Stan, who looks back on his younger years with a mix of fondness and wonder: how did they get away with the things they did then? American suburbia in the 1960s was both loose and conservative, caught between a generation holding on to the reins of the earlier century and one eager to launch into the next. 

Stan, as the youngest child of a big, rowdy family, gives us a charming look into the times, as well as a projection of his own fascination: Apollo 11 and the space age. He inserts himself in this monumental narrative and generously brings us along in his fantasy. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether Stan’s recruitment by NASA is actually fact or fiction, but that’s part of the fun, especially since Stan himself doesn’t seem to mind at all.

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