‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’ uneven family fare
Published 10:24 am Wednesday, November 10, 2021
- A scene from "Clifford the Big Red Dog."
“Clifford the Big Red Dog,” the big screen adaptation of the popular children’s books, certainly has its heart in the right place.
It’s a movie that tries really hard to be as warm and fuzzy as its title character, but it falls short of being a family film that can be enjoyed by the whole family. Young kids will likely be entertained, but parents will find a hard time staying interested.
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“Clifford” tells the story of Emily (Darby Camp), a middle schooler struggling to fit in.
When Emily’s mother, Maggie (Sienna Giullory), has to go away on a business trip, Emily’s uncle Casey (Jack Whitehall) is left in charge of the young girl.
On the way to school, Emily and Casey meet a mysterious man (John Cleese) with a tent full of unique animals looking for a home.
Emily bonds with a small red puppy, but Casey won’t allow her to adopt the dog.
Still, Emily returns home from school to discover the puppy is in her backpack. She decides to secretly keep the puppy and name him Clifford, but when she wakes up the next morning the puppy has become a gigantic red dog.
This sets off a series of adventures with Emily and Casey trying to find the mysterious man while avoiding a greedy millionaire (Tony Hale) trying to capture Clifford for his own financial gains.
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Let’s start with the good stuff in “Clifford.” Camp is very good in the lead role, a performance that shows a lot of promise for the young actress. She’s a natural on the screen and makes a lot of the film’s clunkier moments easy to take.
There are also some nice messages about fitting in and being yourself that will surely resonate with younger audiences.
That’s not enough to overcome the film’s many flaws. It starts with the dog, a clunky CGI creation that never quite fits in, no matter how hard director Walt Becker tries. I get this a film where you have to suspend your belief, but the special effects aren’t good enough to even do that.
As clunky as the CGI Clifford is, the script is even clunkier. It feels like the screenwriters couldn’t figure out how to make a feature-length “Clifford” movie so they just crammed in as many plot threads as they could to fill time.
It leads to a movie that feels like it is all over the place – throwing in a bunch of familiar faces like David Alan Grier, Horatio Sanz and Kenan Thompson.
Camp, and to a lesser extent Cleese, do their best to make it work, but there are too many distractions to keep “Clifford” focused on what it should have been – an endearing family movie about a little girl and her overgrown pet.
Fans of Clifford deserve better.
Starring: Darby Camp, Jack Whitehall
Directed by: Walt Becker
Rating: PG for impolite humor, thematic elements and mild action
Playing at: Regal Bowling Green Stadium 12, Regal Greenwood Mall Stadium 10, Highland Cinemas (Glasgow), streaming on Paramount+
Grade: C