Well, what did you expect? So this is about a sixth-grade girl (Darby Camp). She is isolated at school, and to make matters worse, she finds herself in the care of a lacking babysitter: her screw-up uncle (Jack Whitehall) is looking after her while her mother is away on business. They stop by a magical pet adoption tent one day, and wouldn’t you know that she crosses paths with a dog that will grow proportionately to the amount that she loves him. Hijinks ensue. Now, this wasn’t one that I was looking forward to or anything, but I still figured why not. I already have Paramount+ as a streaming service, and I tend to like dog movies more often than not, CGI or otherwise. The Dog’s Purpose series knows how to pull on your heartstrings/emotionally manipulate you, and The Call of the Wild has strong enough source material to overcome some goofy special effects. Clifford the Big Red Dog doesn’t do either, but it does find marginal success at a very base level.
Now, as you can probably guess, it is the writing that falls the flattest. It is about as clumsy as you would expect, and it is filled with clichés, so much so that I would say that you can find more inspired scripts in the Disney Channel original film library. Giant dog mannerisms can only take you so far, and this sentiment is coming from somebody who shares his home with a 105-pound Chocolate Labrador. This movie is so easy to digest that it is basically gruel… but I still found positives that kept me going. Even though it gets exaggerated to the extreme, there is still something about a kid trying to get reunited with their pet that will garnish an emotional reaction, even if it is just a special effect that you are watching. There were also two performances that I appreciated in this. Jack Whitehall is a cartoon character, but he brings enough charm to the table that it makes a difference. Also, Tony Hale is in this as the stereotypical villain in a movie where the dog is the star, and you can tell that he recognizes that is the film that this is. I’m pretty positive the creators of this are fans of Arrested Development; apart from getting Buster Bluth, they have a character with a fake hand and a character named Lucille.
As a whole, I won’t deny that this movie is sorely lacking. That said, I can’t say that I was ever bored by this. I knew what I was getting myself into, and it moves quickly enough that you’re never going to second guess why you are here. I can’t say that I recommend this, but it could have been a whole lot worse.
Clifford the Big Red Dog (2021) **1/2
– Critic for Hire
Critic for Hire 