Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure

         
Richard Linklater's Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure is a nostalgic look back at Linklater's suburban Houston boyhood set against the backdrop of the space program. The film employs similar animation techniques to the ones Linklater used in A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life: live actors were initially filmed and then animators altered the images to augment the director's vision. The film is in a minor key compared to Linklater's previous animated forays, but it is another successful addition to the director's lifelong attempts to recreate the Texas of a bygone era.

Apollo 10 1/2...has the barest semblance of a plot, Linklater's pre-pubescent protagonist and stand-in is enrolled in a secret NASA mission, and that is its weakest attribute. The boy astronaut sections are a bit too cutesy-poo. The film's success lies in its evocation of the rituals, pastimes, and style of suburban America in the late 1960s. Linklater shows how the excitement of the space race influenced the pop culture of America in general and the economic and social landscape of Texas in particular.

Linklater and his animation team give the film a pop art look that not only mirrors the then current work of Warhol and Lichtenstein, but also the Day-Glo look of 60's advertising in that era of Tang and the Archies. A fount of pop culture artifacts are marshalled by Linklater to nail the time and place: baseball cards, TV shows and movies, hit songs, and classic board games. Linklater even pays tribute to some of the more gruesome hamburger helper type recipes of the period. I am a contemporary of Linklater's, though my childhood in Baltimore was in a totally different cultural milieu, and I can think of no other filmmaker who has so richly captured what the Sixties felt like to a child.

Apollo 10 1/2 also brilliantly depicts the cognitive dissonance of growing up at that time. While the world of the suburbs was relatively idyllic, the turmoil that America and the rest of the world was experiencing was only a click of the television switch away. An affectionate remembrance of things past, Apollo 10 1/2 is another enjoyable slice of cultural anthropology from one of our better filmmakers. It is currently streaming on Netflix.