SXSW Film Review: Richard Linklater’s ‘Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood’

deadline.com:

Richard Linklater’s periodic forays into animation (Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly) have been distinctively imaginative, and that goes double for Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood.

A nostalgic but not in the least sentimental look at Texas life when the American space program was at full thrust, this highly personal but entirely accessible account of growing up in a culture both historically momentous and banal has something to offer all audiences in terms of its vivid portrait of a very specific place and time.

But most receptive of all will be viewers in their 60s and beyond who have personal memories of the July 20, 1969 moon landing and a of milieu both memorable and banal.Linklater calls this project “a memory of a fantasy” as well as a mixture of fantasy and reality, and everyone who was around at the time will certainly have their own recollections of that unique moment in time when a human being first set foot on a surface that was not part of Earth.

This is no doubt the first animated film whose most receptive audience will be people of social security age rather than kids.All the same, there is plenty to appeal here to audiences across the board, as the film spends most of its time capturing the lives and attitudes of the enormous number of Texans whose lives at that time were connected in one way or another with the space program.