Linklater takes us both back in time and into space

Above : Richard Linklater’s animated film “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood” is streaming on Netflix. (Photo/Netflix)

Movie review : “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood,” written and directed by Richard Linklater, voiced by Milo Coy, Jack Black. Streaming on Netflix.

All of us harbor favorite fantasies. They might involve being a sports star, a military hero, some kind of saint, a billionaire entrepreneur or pursuing any number of occupations that interest you. Maybe even – though it’s difficult to figure out exactly why – becoming a politician.

The fantasy of fourth-grader Stan – the principal character in Richard Linklater ’s new Netflix film, “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood” – is typical of kids who lived in and around Houston, Texas, during the summer of 1969: He dreams of being an astronaut. Appropriate enough, considering it was on July 20th of that year that Apollo 11 made its historic landing on the Moon.

Done in rotoscope animation, the same process Linklater used to make 2001’s “Waking Life” and 2006’s “A Scanner Darkly,” “Apollo 10½” follows Stan (voiced by newcomer Milo Coy ) as he navigates his fourth-grade year at Ed White Elementary School – named after the first American to walk in space.

Equipped with a vivid imagination, Stan isn’t above doing a classroom show and tell – typically sticking with the “tell” and ignoring the “show” – with ever-more fantastic tales. Some involve his father, one of the 400,000 or so people who, in 1969, made up NASA’s work force. Chagrined that his dad, who was in charge of shipping and receiving, didn’t have one of the glamorous jobs, Stan is adept at – depending how you look at it – either simply exaggerating what his dad does or totally making stuff up.

Whatever, it is that latter tendency for storytelling that embodies the heart of “Apollo 10½.” Linklater documents the Apollo 11 mission by means of Stan’s imagining that he, because of an uncommon NASA mistake, has been recruited to do a moon-mission dry run. So just as we relive Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon’s surface, we watch as Stan does it, too. But first.

Talk about a vivid imagination brought to animated life. But if that fantasy thrill ride is the heart of “Apollo 10½,” the rest of the film – by far the majority of it – is Linklater’s own documentation of a bygone era … an era that reflects life as any so-called Baby Boomers can easily recall.

His narration as an adult voiced by the comic actor Jack Black , Stan takes us through his daily existence, from attending school to regular family interactions. At school, besides the show and tell, there are kickball games, Cold War-era exercises such as the old duck-and-cover preparations for potential nuclear war and the kind of student-disciplinary paddling sessions that today would be considered child abuse, if not outright assault.

Home time means playing outdoors, totally unsupervised – perish the thought – living on a budget by eating some sort of ham dish five days in a row, fighting over what to watch on the three – count them – three television networks, whether it be “Gunsmoke,” “My Three Sons,” “The Beverly Hillbillies” or any of the dozens of what are now considered classic shows.

While a lot of this may have as much effect on today’s youth as a trek to a history museum, older viewers – meaning anyone born around 1960 (the year of Linklater’s birth) – likely will recall, if not enjoy, this reflection of our recent past.

As for why he resorted to animation, Linklater has said in interviews that the rotoscope process , which involves using animation to trace frame-by-frame over motion picture footage, was particularly important for this film. Set a half century ago, “Apollo 10½” features many places – the Houston theme park Astroworld, for example – that no longer exist. And for many of the events mentioned, no news footage exists and so would be too difficult to portray.

As Linklater explained to IndieWire writer Eric Kohn , “You have the moon, spaceflight. I couldn’t just animate what we filmed. This world had to be very much created.”

Much like what his character Stan does, Linklater uses the magic of his imagination to capture a sense of the recent past for the rest of us – well, at least some of us – to remember … maybe even to savor.