A.X.L. Review
Bad Dog, A.X.L.!
My knee-jerk reaction is to tear into A.X.L. without mercy. However, there’s a tiny voice in the back of my mind that is reminding me of all the terrible sci-fi movies from the 80’s I used to love as a kid. In a lot of ways A.X.L. is an homage to those great (but not always good) films. The adult in me says.”It’s a trash movie with no logic, vapid dialogue, and lackluster performances.” The kid in me says, “Oh my God! A robodog! They have a robodog!”
Let me be clear that I’m not defending the quality of A.X.L. It’s an absolutely terrible film. For one thing, the entire premise revolves around the military wanting to make android war dogs to help on the field of battle. Apparently, robodogs are the big priority in modern warfare and so an evil corporation puts together a four-legged killer robot. Personally, I would think you would want a little more from your robotic weapons, like thumbs. Pushing that aside though for the sake of getting through the rest of the film, A.X.L. continues to throw more and more implausible to the point of absurd plot points at the audience. It’s all a little much and unfortunately director/writer Oliver Daly just doesn’t have the finesse to get me to suspend my disbelief over the whole thing.
Then again, I’m not really the target audience for this film. A.X.L. very much plays like a made for TV movie with a focus on how cool and hip it is to be a young teen fresh outta high school. The lead, Miles (played by Alex Neustaedter) is a too cool for school motocross racer with all the talent but none of the budget to make it to the big times. After encountering a villain straight out of 80’s movies like Better Off Dead or The Karate Kid, discovers a $70 million killer war dog who he becomes bestest friends with. Unfortunately, it turns out that when people misplace something worth $70 million, they kinda want it back. So, our hero sets out to steal classified proprietary military technology. It turns out treason is totally sweet as long as you can land some gnarly jumps on your bike, bruh.
Look, I can sit here all day long and nitpick at A.X.L. until my fingers start to bleed from typing. I’m not going to do that though. I’m going just going to say that it’s childish nonsense that never tries to supplement any of its downfalls with things like acting, jaw-dropping action sequences, or character development. It’s not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but is it a fun movie? Well, not for me. However, I can see how it would be a lot of fun for younger kids. It does have a PG rating after all, and it’s hard to make a truly great movie about killer robots without at least a 13 in there.
What I will say about A.X.L. is that the animation when it comes to the robodog is actually pretty good. Daly manages to give his cybernetic canine a personality, which doesn’t bode with for the humans in the film since they’re “paint by numbers” young adult adventure characters. Still, there’s an endearing quality when it comes to A.X.L. even when he’s using technology that doesn’t seem… appropriate for a weapon designed for war to have as standard features. Then again, great robots like Johnny-5 never really subscribed to logic when it came to their design. In that regards, I would say that the concept for A.X.L. is wasted on this movie. Instead of the focus on motocross and teenage angst, this could have been a new Iron Giant, but it never manages to reach that level or any level really near it.
Unfortunately, kids are probably going to love A.X.L. which means that parents are going to find themselves being dragged to theaters to see this film. Fear not though, because outside of all the illogic of the plot, it’s not that bad. Rather I should say it’s tolerable. If you don’t focus on some of the truly mind-blowing plot holes (like, why is it possible to burn a machine made for combat with a flamethrower? Why does it have “play” mode? etc), it’s not that hard to get through. Not the highest praise, but after seeing some truly awful movies aimed at kids this year, it’s praise enough for A.X.L.
Like I said earlier, I could sit back and tear this movie apart. However, unlike so many other bad movies I’ve had to sit through this year, I don’t bear any ill-will towards this film. A.X.L. is what it is. An overly simplistic movie made to impress kids who are still too young to understand what they’re seeing on the big screen. It’s pure spectacle and entertainment for them. If you’ve moved on from middle school, you’re probably not going to enjoy this film. If you have little ones though, well, you could do a lot worse than A.X.L. Then again, you could do a lot better too. Personally, I’m a bigger fan of the other dog movie that came out this month, Alpha. Given a choice, I’d say it’s pretty obvious which of these movies is the good boy when it comes down to it.
