AJ Thompson in AJ Goes to the Dog Park (Image Courtesy of AJ Goes to the Dog Park Productions LLC)
There’s something deeply satisfying about seeing an artist go back to a muse solely because the end result will be so gosh-darned pleasing. That’s the feeling you’ll get from AJ Goes to the Dog Park, the latest collaboration between writer/director Toby Jones and lead actor AJ Thompson. Well, less collaboration, more playdate.
Receiving its world premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest as part of the Burnt Ends sidebar, it’s definitely-not-a-sequel-but-still-kinda to their 2014 short for Cartoon Network, “AJ’s Infinite Summer.” That was designed as a pilot for a series that was never picked up, which in hindsight seems like a real shame. It was another way for Jones to highlight the lyrical, sweet-natured comedy of his friend who he has fictionalized, on and off, since they were school friends in Fargo. In the intervening years, Jones established a career as a writer and director for animated series like Regular Show and OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes!, while Thompson has stayed in Fargo and gone into IT.
Maybe it’s those shared roots and diverting but still intertwining lives that make AJ Goes to the Dog Park so endearing. The film is both mundane and surreal, with no one blinking an eye at the weirdness of it all because they’re concentrating on their everyday lives. For AJ, that means getting up, eating butter cinnamon toast, going to work, having dinner with either his dad or his best friends, watching YouTube, and taking his dogs to the dog park. But all that reliable routineness falls apart, and the changes reach their nadir when the dog park becomes a blog park. Which is exactly what it sounds like.
To put everything back in order, AJ must go on a Herculean quest of five tasks – fighting, fishing, scrapping, scraping, and sapping, which again are all pretty much what they sound like – so that he can become mayor of Fargo.
AJ Goes to the Dog Park doesn’t feel like a movie so much as two creative friends getting together and having fun exploring a comedic person. It’s much like how Joe Swanberg’s Uncle Kent found a fictional platform for cartoonist Kent Osborne to play someone like himself – or more specifically, how the sequel directed by Todd Rohal, the much less sexually graphic and more likably quirky Uncle Kent 2 continued that obsession.
Equally, the city of Fargo is a character, but one far removed from the world of the TV series of the same name, where the snow falls deep to hide the blood. This Fargo is just as fictionalized, but still feels grounded and familiar, even if its inhabitants are more than a little quirky.
There’s a handcrafted warmth here, exuding a sort of ramshackle, “let’s put the show on in the barn” energy that relies on building a team from friends – whether it be the residents of Fargo, or other Cartoon Network talents like Rebecca Sugar (Adventure Time, Steven Universe) and Owen Dennis (Infinity Train). But mostly it has Thompson as AJ, an endearing and amiably aimless spirit who learns that the more you try to keep things the same, the more they change. Well, except for his collaborations with Jones. If they can just keep doing these odd, heartfelt little projects, with their Video Toaster-level CG tears and Halloween store kaiju costumes, we’ll all be the better for it.
AJ Goes to the Dog Park
USA, 2024, 79 min.
World Premiere
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