‘Apollo 10 1/2’ Film Review: Richard Linklater’s Nostalgic Reverie Is Less ‘First Man,’ More ‘Crooklyn’
thewrap.comPresidential Fitness Challenge certificate) to go to the moon before Neil Armstrong to test out a capsule that has accidentally been made too small for adult astronauts.
But no sooner does Stan upchuck during his first G-force simulation than adult Stan (Jack Black) hijacks the narration and takes a long detour into the sights and sounds and memories of growing up as a youngest child in late-’60s suburbia.This charming walk down memory lane — which includes everything from “Dark Shadows” to grandparents who remember the Depression to riding to the beach on the back of pick-up trucks and using gasoline-soaked rags to wipe the tar off your feet — is the heart of “Apollo 10 1/2,” and it’s an exhilarating, Proustian wave of reminiscences.
Unlike the “memberberries” school of nostalgia that can reduce itself to “I had that lunch box!” Linklater gets granular and specific (and thus universal) about his memories and his perceptions of the world at that time. (As a youngest child of a large family myself, I can attest to the details Linklater recalls here, from early exposure to pop music via your older sister’s 45 RPM records to squeezing into the tiniest and least comfortable parts of a station wagon on group outings.)There’s no dark underbelly to Linklater’s recollections — this isn’t “Fanny and Alexander” or the comics of Lynda Barry, where children vacillate between heartbreak and wonder — but the sunny technological optimism of the late-’60s is inevitably tinged with regret and irony as we understand where the world went from there.
Read more on thewrap.com