Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood
Director: Richard Linklater
Year Released: 2022
Rating: 2.0
While growing up in Houston in the late 1960's, Stanley (voiced by Jack Black) - who has five siblings - gets asked by NASA to go on a "covert operation" and help them test out a lunar module that they "accidentally" made too small. This is Linklater going on a huge nostalgic tour of his own childhood (he was born in 1960) and the rotoscoped animation works nicely with what's clearly a boyhood dream of his ... but it's also wildly indulgent and clearly without much (if any) of a plot: I'm sorry, but most of us don't need to be told of every single game you played, record you listened to, hobby you had or prank phone call you made in that time period. The family is also completely sanitized: aside from Mom's chain-smoking, they make The Waltons look like axe murderers. "Conspiracy theorist" Grandma - who boasts that JFK "isn't really dead" - would have adored the Internet of today.