Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’ on Paramount+, an Outsized Kiddie Romp

Now on Paramount+, Clifford the Big Red Dog follows the likes of Charlotte’s Web, Where the Wild Things Are and Paddington in the live-action children’s-book adaptation sweepstakes, and surely precludes inevitable, potentially terrifying CGI versions of Curious George and Pete the Cat. The [consults thesaurus] giant crimson pooch was created in 1963 by cartoonist and author Norman Bridwell, whose 80 Clifford books are school-library staples; all previous audio-visual iterations were cartoons, so Clifford’s new photo-realistic rendering follows the Laws of Hollywood Regurgitation of Intellectual Property to the letter. Now here’s hoping the movie has more Paddington charm than poop-bag gags.

CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Patience, please: A 94-second eternity passes before Clifford the Big Red Dog shows us adorable cavorting puppies. A golden retriever mama and her downy babes are being cute as cute can possibly effing be in an abandoned seaside warehouse in New York City when animal control guys scoop ’em up. But one was left behind, one whose fur is an unusual shade of deep crimson, somewhere on the spectrum between “red delicious” and “coagulated blood.” He howls mournfully. Hearts break en masse. Even the bees and ants are crying. THE BEES AND ANTS. But then he’s taken in by a strange man (John Cleese) who looks like the love child of Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Belvedere. More on him in a minute.

Cut to: Emily Elizabeth Howard (Darby Camp). She’s the new sixth grader at the Highly Prestigious Academy for Snooty Brats, where mean girls call her “food stamps” because she’s there on scholarship. She goes home to an improbably spacious apartment in Harlem that looks like it rents for about four grand a month, where she lives with her mother (Sienna Guillory). Emily passes by her colorful neighbors to establish their future involvement in the plot, and participates in instances of product placement, including a sugary breakfast cereal (for the kids) and durable flooring materials (for the adults). I bet that particular brand of durable flooring material could absolutely hold up nicely in areas heavily trafficked by precocious children and colossal dogs, or your money back!

Anyway, Mom has to head out of town for work, leaving Emily in the care of her uncle Casey (Jack Whitehall), an amiable slob who looks like a burrito dropped from a significant height. He lives in a truck and is an unemployed illustrator. Emily greets him with 1,000 eyerolls. She’s a smart kid. On the way to school the next morning, Emily and Casey pass by an animal rescue tent in the park, run by the aforementioned strange old man. He introduces himself as Bridwell. Of course Emily melts at the sight of the red pup. “How big will he get?” she asks, and Bridwell responds with the words of a true chaosmonger: “Depends how much you love him.” Her pleas to keep the dog are rebuffed by Casey, who’s now caught between the good graces of his sister and his niece.

But these things go as they go, and so Emily goes to school and comes home and opens her backpack to find the dog inside. How? It is a mystery. Casey says they’re gonna return the pup the next day, but it’s already too late. Emily names the dog Clifford and snuggles up in bed with him and wishes for him to be big and strong and wakes up the next day and voila, now he makes Cujo look like a field mouse. Casey and Emily want to know what the deal is with the dog, and their quest to track down Bridwell results in Clifford romping through New York City, licking his giant self in front of everybody, whizzing like a firehose at the park and becoming a social media superstar. They rally allies in Owen (Izaac Wang) and, eventually, her entire community — and they need the support when a corporate jerkwad (Tony Hale) tries to steal Clifford so he can study his DNA and create gigantic animals to solve the world’s food crisis. CHAOS REIGNS.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: As far as realistically CGI’d canines go, Clifford shows a marked progression from Scooby-Doo and Marmaduke. Visually, I mean. Philosophically, though, the idea is in a continual stasis of dogfarts and butt-sniffing.

Performance Worth Watching: Upgrading significantly from 2018’s Benji, Darby Camp creates a winning blend of mild precocity, earnestness and spirited moxie for a role that’s underwritten because it exists to play second fiddle to a dog the size and shade of a London double-decker bus.

Memorable Dialogue: “I hope I’m not around for no. 2.” — Is Casey expressing his reluctance to clean up after the dog, or is that Jack Whitehall metatextually saying he’s not reprising his role for the sequel?

Sex and Skin: I struggle to suspend my disbelief when CGI-cartoon animals don’t appear to be anatomically correct, yet still eliminate waste and emit gas with plausible regularity.

Our Take: “The thing about animals is, the best time to find them is when you’re not looking for them,” says Bridwell. That’s a nice sentiment about unconditional love between humans and their pets, and a tough one to criticize. But there are also times when you go to the shelter with the goal of picking out a friend for life, and absolutely get one. For instance, my 18-pound gentle giant of a cat, who pines for greater feline representation in Hollywood, which has blatantly prioritized dog-centric stories for too many years, and rarely strays from the depiction of cats as conniving, scratchy villains with cold hearts. He’s forming a lobby as we speak.

Anyway, my furry bud curled his Russian Blue bulk next to me and slept through this movie — a relevant point because I only slightly envied him. Sure, Clifford trafficks in the usual pandering family-movie crud — scatological jokes, cute kids, cute animals, wacky adults, assorted hijinks, gooey viscous wads of sentiment — but isn’t wholly without charm. The movie does several things right: It doesn’t go too anthropo in its characterization of Clifford, who remains wholly doglike throughout (he could’ve been ugly — real ugly — but is unfailingly cute). It doesn’t overstay its welcome, and is bright, colorful and light on its feet. It depicts a vibrant community rallying for a girl and the outsized love she has for an outsized dog. It’s not an origin story, and therefore doesn’t try to explain the mystery of Clifford’s size and color; you have to chalk it up as magic, and if you don’t accept that explanation, you’re probably a killjoy adult. And it makes you want to BELIEVE again. We gotta BELIEVE in shit or else we’re just another hardened heart lost to a cold world in which there are no cardinal-coated dogs the size of smart cars, but where there will always be the great whimsy of the imagination.

Our Call: STREAM IT. I dunno if Norman Bridwell is spinning in his grave — probably a little bit. But on its own terms as a family-friendly diversion, Clifford the Big Red Dog isn’t wholly flushable, which feels like a small miracle.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Clifford the Big Red Dog on Paramount+