I’m starting to realize that I might just have a genuine soft spot for the whole boy-and-his-dog genre. I don’t just mean with stuff like Alpha, which i genuinely good, or the fact that I think the new Bumblebee looks great, but in that I seem to be forgiving about fluff like Earth To Echo, or Monster Trucks. Remember Monster Trucks? Don’t worry, not many people do, it’s probably for the best. So, take it with a grain of salt when I say, A-X-L is kind of alright-ish.
It’s about a this young guy, Miles Hill (Alex Neustaedter), an aspiring motocross competitor trying to win his way to the big leagues. After an encounter with the conniving rich kid and fellow motocross racer, Sam Fontaine (Alex MacNicoll), leaves him injured and alone in the desert, he stumbles across A-X-L, a robodog built by the military. They becomes besties, and his love interest, Sara Reyes (Becky G), soon finds out about it, but decides to help when it seems like the government is coming to get their property back.
Yes, there is not a single original idea in here. Yes, it is very predictable. And yes, there is zero practicality in the military designing a robodog because, you know, drones exist, and it makes no sense whatsoever to design a robot that behaves like a dog. Yes, that is all true. However, despite all that, the movie doesn’t seem to be employing these various clichés with a sense of cynicism. It honestly feels like a movie where the script was collecting dust on a shelf since 1986, and someone finally blew the dust off and decided to film it. Although, in reality, it’s based on a 2014 short film called Miles (which you can see here), and the filmmaker behind that, Oliver Daly, has adapted it to the big screen as writer and director.
It’s weird how literal the movie takes the whole boy-and-his-dog idea, since the the dog part is usually metaphorical, be it an alien, or a robot, or any other animal, but nope, it’s a straight up robopup. But even with that A-X-L is a pretty neat, if occasionally confounding, creation. The design is nice and slick, he’s full of gadgets and tricks that play into the story in fun ways, and his behavior as a dog, when it’s not weird, is ultimately kind of charming. One thing I really liked is that the film doesn’t shy away from how dangerous he can be, as it contains several moments where he is on full attack mode, and it’s rather tense and scary. Plus, the effects to make him come to life is impressive. I totally bought him as a presence, interacting with the characters.
Speaking of, the characters here might not be the most well-drawn, but their serviceable takes on common archetypes, and the unabashed kindheartedness of Miles and Sara makes it easy to care and root for them as the plot starts ramping up. Whenever it cut away from their story to Andric (Dominic Rains) and Randall (Lou Taylor Pucci), the government employees responsible for A-X-L who are trying to track him down, I found myself getting frustrated because it’s like watching someone watching the movie as they kept on watching footage from A-X-L, and Andric keeps delaying a reaction because he wants to see where things go with his creation, but ironically enough, these moments stop the movie dead in its tracks. As for any other noteworthy supporting players, Thomas Jane shows up as Miles’ single father, and he’s a delight to watch in the few scenes he gets.
A-X-L doesn’t seem to have any higher ambitions beyond being another one of these movies (they kind of bring up whether the robopup is actually a living entity very briefly, but it’s dropped pretty quick), and I think that’s perfectly fine, especially considering this skews pretty young, and I doubt an seven-year-old will care about the practicality of building a robotic war-doggo. They will just enjoy seeing said robotic war-doggo scaring the bejesus out of the snotty rich bully, who may I remind you has the last name Fontaine. You couldn’t make up a more obnoxious rich kid surname if you tried. This movie seems to know exactly what it’s doing, and while the execution of it all isn’t necessarily the most polished or even that memorable, the fact that I got teary eyed at a big moment where the robodog yelled “yo, send it,” is not nothing.