SXSW Film Review: Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood

There’s something special about getting to experience the premiere of a new Richard Linklater film at a festival like SXSW.

The Texas filmmaking icon who helped to foster an entire new era of independent filmmaking is treated with a deserved reverence that fills a room of fans with an electric energy from knowing they’re seeing the new vision of a hometown hero.

Though of course, Linklater’s true hometown is actually Houston, where his new animated coming-of-age period piece Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood is set. Playfully crossing historical revisionism and nostalgic waxing about the touchstones of his own childhood, it follows Stanley as he grows up in the late 1960s under the shadow of NASA at the height of the growing excitement of space exploration. Almost on a whim, Stanley is plucked off the school playground by some suits from the agency for help with a special task: a preliminary test trip to the moon in a lunar module that was built a tad too small.

The idea is something of a fantastical anchor to a film whose actual through line is more concerned with the vivid depiction of specific time and place. The era in which Linklater grew up is depicted here as a time both simpler yet more hazardous in ways a child wouldn’t pick up on until years down the road – those hazards noted by the voiceover by Jack Black as an older Stanley that guides the film through its carousel of memories. Stanley’s actual trip to the moon isn’t necessarily an afterthought, but maybe more of a grace note the movie lands on as a culmination of Stanley’s entire childhood as he takes one small step into his future.

This is all conveyed through beautifully and uniquely drawn and rendered rotoscope animation. The style allows the film to portray all of its bygone cultural hallmarks with a singular visual verisimilitude. It makes this vision of the past feel like personal manifestations of recollection, Linklater’s preoccupation with time once again taking the ultimate forefront of what his projects are really about. It may feel somewhat slight when it’s all said and done, but Apollo is packed with Linklater’s unique voice and breezy attitude that makes you feel right at home with him.

Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood

This article appears in Guide to SXSW 2022.