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Reviews for November 10th, 2021

Clifford the Big Red Dog

Directed by Walt Becker




      Emily Elizabeth (Darby Camp), a lonely sixth-grader, lives in New York City with her workaholic mother, Maggie (Sienna Guillory), and goes to a private school where she's bullied by a classmate. When her mother has to leave town for work for a few days, Emily's immature uncle, Casey (Jack Whitehall), takes care of her. They stop by a mysterious animal rescuer, Bridwell (John Cleese), who has a red puppy that ends up in Emily's backpack. She keeps the puppy and named him Clifford, but the next morning Clifford turns into a giant red dog which the evil Tieran (Tony Hale) wants to kidnap.

      Clifford the Big Red Dog combines comedy, sci-fi, drama and action with very uneven results. The screenplay by Jay Scherick, David Ronn and Blaise Hemingway begins with a rather lengthy first act that briefly introduces the audience to Clifford as a puppy before cutting to Emily and her single mother. Emily struggles to make friends at school and gets picked on by a mean girl, Florence (Mia Ronn). Little does she know that Owen (Izaac Wang) has a crush on her. Her uncle, Casey, struggles to be financially stable and lives in the back of a moving truck. He's far from the ideal person to take care of Emily, but his incompetence and stupidity is there for a reason: to try to make the audience laugh. The attempts at humor fall flat, for the most part, with slapstick that might be somewhat funny for kids, but too silly for adults. When Clifford pops out of Emily's backpack at her apartment, the film veers into comedy-of-error involving the super (David Alan Grier), Clifford and Casey. Unfortunately, there's not much of that kind of humor afterward; it's back to slapstick and silly humor. Yes, Clifford pees on a tree and, you guessed it, onto Casey as well. Is that kind of gross-out humor supposed to be funny? Even when the screenplay inserts jokes that go over kids' heads, like a reference to Burning Man, it still doesn't manage to be funny or witty. A trip to a veterinarian (Kenan Thompson) leads to more lazy, gross-out humor.

      One of the systemic problem with the screenplay is that it's obvious that the screenwriters are trying too hard to please the audience, but they forgot that too many subplots and conflicts can make a movie feel overstuffed, uncooked and messy. They also forgot to develop the bond of friendship between Emily and Clifford because they're too much in a hurry to move the plot forward rather than to slow down and breathe a little life into the characters. Also, they fail to utilize the comedic talents of John Cleese who seems wasted in his role, and the exposition of the mysterious character that he plays isn't very clear. He's introduced initially as though he were a villain even though he's not. Somehow, he has superpowers which remain unexplained. He was much funnier in his supporting role in The Out-of-Towners. The underrated Siobhan Fallon Hogan is also underused. She says one line that's funny before disappearing. Tovah Feldshuh also shows up briefly and has some fun in her role, but she's not on-screen enough either. The villain, Tieran, comes across as very cartoonish and over-the-top, but not in a campy or amusing sort of way. He's more annoying than anything else. Why not humanize him a little more by giving him a backstory? Even some villains in animated films have more of a backstory. That's yet another testament to the screenplay's lack of imagination. Moreover, the third act feels rushed, corny and doesn't earn its uplift. For a more surprisingly moving and exhilarating family-friendly movie about friendship between a dog and a human, see The Call of the Wild or the classic Beethoven.

      The CGI in Clifford the Big Red Dog is mediocre at best with some scenes that have issues with scale. Clifford looks cute, at least, but that's not enough to entertain the audience. Surprisingly, the audience doesn't even get to see Clifford growing in size from a puppy to the giant dog; Emily merely wakes up to him looking giant-sized the next morning. If only there were more of John Cleese, Siobhan Fallon Hogan and Tovah Feldshah to elevate the film. Darby Camp shows promise with her heartfelt performance as does Izaac Wang, so the child actors are very well cast. The pacing moves along briskly enough, although the first act moves a bit too slow to get to the meat of the story. At a running time of 1 hour and 37 minutes, Clifford the Big Red Dog is harmless, but uneven and lazy with too much silliness and not enough laughs, heart or wit.

Number of times I checked my watch: 3
Released by Paramount Pictures.
Opens nationwide and on Paramount +.