Clifford the Big Red Dog (2021)
While Clifford the Big Red Dog is missing some essential ingredients, it’s good-natured, with a nice message for the young children it aims to entertain. There’s not much here for adults but you could do much worse.
Lonely middle schooler Emily Elizabeth Howard (Darby Camp) is being babysat by her down-on-his-luck uncle Casey (Jack Whitehall) when they run into Mr. Bridwell (John Cleese), an eccentric animal-lover who gives Emily a red puppy. After “Clifford” suddenly grows to gigantic size, he catches the attention of Lifegro, a genetics company that wants to experiment on the oversized pooch.
There’s something clumsy about the screenplay, which first has Clifford separated from his mother, then rescued by Bridwell, then handed over to Emily. What’s weird is that Clifford is his unusual red color BEFORE he grows big, which makes you wonder if Bridwell had anything to do with the canine’s strange size… despite his magical abilities being explicitly shown. Also strange is the casting. Emily speaks with an American accent. Her uncle Casey does too but his sister/Emily’s mom (played by Sienna Guillory) is British. It means the film has to cram in a line about how he moved away when they were kids but she moved to the States to raise her daughter. It’s a puzzling choice but a trivial issue. The real problem concerns Emily and Clifford’s relationship.
This film’s story is not revolutionary. It’s E.T., The Iron Giant, and Bumblebee: a lonely child gets a strange, wonderful/magical friend that some official/corporate guy wants to take away. That’s fine as long as the humor is effective (which it mostly is) and the love between the girl and her pet is felt. That's what's lacking. There are few scenes of Emily and Clifford playing, helping each other out of various comedic jams, or bonding. In their place, we get several (some might say too many) of Emily’s quirky neighbors. To be fair, they effectively get the film’s message front and center: Like Clifford, many of them could be called weird but in this wild adventure, their unique skills/attributes are exactly what is needed to rescue the big red dog from the nasty owner of Lifegro, Mr. Peter Tieran (Tony Hale).
A long hard look at Clifford the Big Red Dog does the film no favors but something about it somehow manages to wriggle its way into your heart. The scenes of puppy chaos are funny. Emily’s only friend at school is Owen (Izaac Wang) and the two young actors play well with each other. Acting-wise, they do pretty well considering they were acting against a green ball on-set. Thankfully, the references to TikTok and other similar social media are reduced to a minimum and the focus is primarily on Emily, Clifford, and their friends.
Although adults will have seen pretty much all of Clifford the Big Red Dog in some other form, the children they're accompanying to the theater won't. For them, I will call it a good movie. Overall, it's gentle, moves along quickly, and has a fair number of laughs. That's enough. (Theatrical version on the big screen, November 6, 2021)