139. Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood; movie review

 

APOLLO 10½ - A SPACE AGE CHILDHOOD

Cert 12A

97 mins

BBFC advice: Contains dangerous behaviour, injury detail

I remember with huge fondness the time of space exploration and man landing on the moon.

Indeed, my parents still have the story I wrote about it while I was at primary school.

Thus, much of Richard Linklater's Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood resonated with me as it was about children who were brought up at the time of the lunar landings.

Little did we know that when the Apollo missions ran out of money in the early 70s, trips to the moon which had become almost commonplace, would cease.

Linklater's animated movie is narrated by Jack Black and concentrates on Stan, a carefree kid, who has five brothers and sisters.

It is a diary of his life in Houston in the late 1960s and is packed with memory jogs.

It didn't flick quite as many switches with me as Belfast because there are so many American and specifically Houston cultural references.

Some elements translate - for example, the freedom which children had to play when and wherever they wanted to (what happened to that?).

And the brutality of school teachers who were incredibly creative when doling our punishment.

Meanwhile, there is the strange parallel scenario in which Stan is chosen to be an astronaut because the boffins have miscalculated the size of the lunar module.

I couldn't grasp whether this was meant to be real or just in Stan's head.

Either way, I'm not sure that it fitted with the nostalgia kick which would have made a meaty enough storyline on its own.

Oh, and I enjoyed the animation. I thought it added to the sense of wistful escapism.

Reasons to watch: Packed with nostalgia

Reasons to avoid: The boy on space mission element doesn't quite work

Laughs: None

Jumps: None

Vomit: Yes

Nudity: None

Overall rating: 7/10

Did you know? There had originally been 20 Apollo missions planned but technological and research based missions were not seen as important as the achievement of the moon landing itself and the final three missions were cancelled.

The final word. Richard Linklater: "We were living in science fiction. It was so exciting, but it’s the olden days now. It’s how it felt to be a little kid. Technofuture was so cool and optimistic, and the real world — as the real world can be — there was a lot of doom and gloom in the air, too. I tried to capture the dissonance in a young person’s mind.” The Wrap

Share this post