A-X-L

A teenage motocross racer (Alex Neustaedter) bonds with a robot dog, an escapee from a government contractor that is developing canine weapons for the military. As ridiculous as it sounds, that summary of this dim teen romance/sci-fi hybrid is more credible than the finished product. Writer-director Oliver Daly expanded his script from a seven-minute short, but the added 93 minutes were too much for him. Didn’t anyone notice that the story made no sense, that it was just remnants of Short Circuit, E.T., WarGames and other better movies, strung together more or less at random? What did the movie’s ten producers actually do? Despite the money and effort lavished on the CGI pooch, the only redeeming feature is some good racing footage in the opening scenes—about seven minutes’ worth, come to think of it.