Clifford the Big Red Dog

As we all have gone through the ringer with this pandemic in the past year and a half plus, it's been a while since we've seen a really heartwarming family film. Families have been the brunt of all that has caused hardship, what with mandates, supply chain issues, vaccines, death, sickness, financial difficulty, and the like. So, by now we sincerely need a film like "Clifford the Big Red Dog" to be able to attempt to diffuse all the problems we have encountered out there.

When middle-schooler, 12-year-old Emily Elizabeth Howard (Darby Camp) meets a magical animal rescuer Bridwell (John Cleese) who gifts her a little red puppy, she never anticipated waking up to find a giant ten-foot hound in her small New York City apartment. While her single mom Maggie (Sienna Guillory) is away for business, Emily and her fun, but impulsive and irresponsible uncle, Casey (Jack Whitehall) set out on an adventure attempting to stop one Zac Tieran (Tony Hale) from kidnapping Clifford for nefarious reasons that will keep you on the edge of your seat as our heroes take a bite out of  the Big Apple. Based on the Scholastic book character, Clifford will teach the world how to love big!

Others to round out the cast are Izaac Wang as Owen, David Alan Grier as Packard, Russell Peters as Malik, Paul Rodriguez as Alonso, Horatio Sanz as Raul, Russell Wong as Mr. Yu and Kenan Thompson as a vet.

This was whimsically directed by Walt Becker ("Van Wilder" '02, "Buying the Cow" '02, "Wild Hogs" '07, "1321 Clover" (TV movie) '07, "Old Dogs" '09, "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip" '15) plus TV. Although this filmmaker doesn't escape from his comfort zone with this, we are all the recipients of the positive feel of this heartwarming story. The expressiveness of Emily, Casey and especially Clifford is undeniably attractive to its target audience: the family. If this kind of directing pleases, his "Tradeshow" is in pre-production. This was effectively written by Jay Scherick, David Ronn and Blaise Hemingway, based on a screen story by Justin Malen and Ellen Rapoport, which is based on the beloved Scholastic Book Series "Clifford the Big Red Dog" by Norman Bridwell. This was well written in the fact that it followed the book series well, it was cohesive, concise all with a tight script. Now, did this have a somewhat predictable premise? Sure, but it is based on a child's story and with this, the predictability is definitely permissible. As I've mentioned in previous reviews, typically, if there are more than two writers involved with a screenplay, it has a tendency to become bogged down with choppiness and meandering, however, this having three writers didn't cause those situations to occur. In fact, because there was such a meaty source of this screenplay, they were able to pull it off. Of course, both Scherick and Ronn, who have collaborated on many films, and having the lion's share of the experience here didn't hurt. 

If you have a family, or know many families, this is a film for you. This has so many positive attributes imbued within the script: discovery, love, compassion all with an amazing message for all actually. And in a day where we could use more love and compassion, this film has spoken in volumes!

Out of 4 Stars: 3.5                                             Rated: PG                                               97mins.