"Well at least this is more fun than the simulator."
Apollo 10½ purports to be a film about a secret Apollo mission where a ten-year-old boy called Stan was sent to the Moon because they make the module too small. In actuality that's a tiny part of the film and really its a film in a similar vein to Belfast or Licorice Pizza, essentially the director reminiscing on their childhood.
There is frankly very little plot here. It's mostly just the grown-up Stan (voiced by Jack Black) narrating through the nostalgia of his childhood, going though what they used to do, eat, play and watch at the cinema and on TV. The lack of plot will frustrate some but I really liked the reminiscing. Richard Linklater always has nostalgia in his films and this time that's more of the focus than anything else.
The film is made with rotoscope animation, which means actors were filmed performing the part and something magical happens to turn it into animation. I can kind of see why Linklater went with animation but at the same time I can't help but think that it would have been nice to see this in live-action.
Scenes of Stan going to the moon are interspersed throughout the film and this was the thing I least liked about the film. An explanation of what was happening with this plotline is inferred at the end of the film but I thought that most of these sequences got in the way of the nostalgia. Clearly that wasn't really the story that Linklater wanted to tell so why focus on it as much as he did.
A really lovely film that depicts the director's childhood in a loving way. I'm increasingly becoming a big fan of Richard Linklater and the way he manages to capture a realistic charm that few others can replicate.
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