A-X-L (2018)

A young boy (teen) stumbles across a robot dog which he manages to befriend. Said robot dog is in fact a military weapon designed to protect soldiers in the field. Its code name is A.X.L. Attack, Exploration, Logistics, and the military want him back. Methinks one has seen this concept on the silver screen before.

Yes once again it appears as though the moneymen thought it would be a good idea to somewhat remake the 1986 science fiction adventure 'Short Circuit'. Despite the fact that Neill Blomkamp essentially tried the same thing with his 2015 movie 'CHAPPiE' to middling success. I guess this time making the robot a pet might help its chances? But its not just 'Short Circuit' this movie is based off oh no, throw in some 'Robocop' and some 'Karate Kid' for a right royal rip-off...sorry its called a homage these days isn't it.

The robot in question is a huge thing I might add, it's like a big cat sized robot. An ultra sleek, smooth, shiny, fully equipped robot that can rip a human apart, hack into any software...and bark. Yes that's right because when you make a robot dog you make it so it barks too...apparently. This robot also fully acts like a real dog. It bounds around in a playful fashion, it begs, it growls, it seems to like being stroked, and it even enjoys chewing on sticks (metal bars...cos its a robot).  Like why the feck would you design your military robot to do any of that? The soldiers its gonna protect know its a robot, they know it's not a real bloody dog so you don't have to have it imitate one.

But this four-legged box of tricks doesn't stop there. Throughout the movie it is revealed that this robot can do virtually anything it wants. It can project images and lights (like in a disco), it can play music, it has rocket boosters on its hind legs, it can use social media...oh and it will self-destruct to stop the enemy from getting ahold of it. Many of these things could be useful, I guess, in a conflict situation. But generally its pretty obvious these traits were simply added to fuel the plot in specific situations.

As for the human characters, well they are also your standard unbelievable stereotypes. Our protagonist Miles (Alex Neustaedter) is your usual good looking toned teen who broods behind his flowing locks a lot. He is being raised by his single-parent father so that's why he's more rugged, manly, and moody I guess. His father (Thomas Jane) is also what you might expect. A scruffy baseball hat wearing mechanic who looks like he could be stern but is actually a good man. But in true 'Karate Kid' fashion the hot young stud has an enemy whom he must contend with over the course of the flick. This bully pretends to be his friend but in reality he's jealous of his dirt bike skills and the fact Miles is taking his woman (so kinda justified).

Said main love interest Sara (Becky G...?) is incredibly attractive and curvy in all the right places...because of course she is. No ugly or plain-looking young folk in this movie. She's literally like a young Megan Fox for this movie (apparently she's one of these ex-You-Tube youngsters who has since become a singer or whatever). All these young characters speak in a dialect I don't quite follow, some kind of hip-hop speech or something (2018 folks). 'I'm gonna bounce' seems to translate into 'I'm going to leave'. Lots of 'bro's' and 'my bads' and all this crap youngsters speak these days. There really doesn't appear to be much acting going on but rather constant posing and strutting. Who can look the coolest, who can swagger the hardest, who's more toned etc...

Now with the other movies I've mentioned the special effects were pretty awesome. Now with 'Short Circuit' the plot was very thin and cliched but the practical effects were terrific (for the time). What they achieved with a real robot was impressive. And here's where this movie fails again. As with everything these days practical/live-action effects are virtually a thing of the past. Everything is CGI nowadays and this movie doesn't try to change that. So the robot dog is mostly CGI with the odd close-up of a practical body part. Whilst the small bits of practical effects were nicely done, the CGI just let everything down as you might expect. Yes I know they couldn't use a real robot dog but the reliance on CGI is just too much.

I'm not gonna say this movie is all bad but it was close. Clearly they have tried to make something semi-serious here, a sci-fi with an actual emotional core. Unfortunately they have missed the mark quite badly. I mean, apart from the cliched beautifully toned young people and all their posturing, the blatant plot rip-off, the obvious predictability (more so if you've seen those older films), and the needless chase sequences along with over the top stunts. You also have ludicrously dumb sequences where Miles and Sara manage to fix the robot dog after its been badly damaged with fire (yes the military robot is invulnerable...apart from fire? And it's a military robot??). They literally rebuild the thing! OK Miles is a mechanic like his dad but there is no way he should be able to rebuild this robot. The US government clearly need to hire the kid.

4/10