Movie Thoughts: Clifford the Big Red Dog (2021)

• Released: November 10, 2021
  
• Directed by: Walt Becker
• Running time: 1h 36min
• Rating 2/5

Synopsis

A girl adopts a puppy who grows to a giant size, and she now has to find a way to keep him safe.

My Thoughts

I grew up watching the Clifford show, however it was so long ago that I really don't have much memories of it. I vaguely remember the premise and some of the characters, but that's about it. So despite technically having a prior attachment to the series, it still isn't much of a connection as I was so young when I watched this I forgot most of it. 

This movie is...eh, okay. Inoffensive, for the most part, but also not very good. It's very, very generic. If you've seen any movie where the main premise is keeping the secret pet hidden and fighting off evil people trying to kidnap it, you've seen them all, and this one is no exception to that rule. 

Another thing that definitely hurt the movie is that the bond between Emily Elizabeth and Clifford just does not feel genuine. It feels like they're only best buddies because the movie says they are, rather than showing an actually meaningful connection form between the duo. The fast pace also doesn't help in this regard.

The visuals are also a bit mixed. While in principle the animation on Clifford is good, his design as a puppy gives him a distractingly small head. This, and the live-action/animation blending just isn't very well done at times. So while the animation isn't bad or anything, it just doesn't look like it meshes well with the real environments at times. At no point did I believe that Clifford was really there, it all just had this not-so-great look to it. Also they gave the sheep upper incisors. Kind of looks disturbing on an otherwise realistic design. I don't get why depictions of ungulates in fiction are always so insistent on giving their designs human teeth, it never looks right.

Finally, I just gotta say that I'm not too fond of the ending where Emily Elizabeth gets to keep Clifford in her apartment. The first part is fine, he deserves a loving owner, but I really don't see why they couldn't include the part from the cartoon where Emily Elizabeth's family ends up moving to a plot of land with a big garden where Clifford can live happily. Because right now the ending puts this giant dog in a tiny apartment where he can't even turn around without breaking everything around him, so this doesn't come across as a very happy ending to me. I'm probably thinking too hard about this, but even the original show thought of a simple solution for this conundrum, so I've no idea why the movie didn't incorporate that as well. Wouldn't it have been a much happier sendoff if we got to see Clifford frolicking in a large field, away from the crampedness and business of a giant metropolitan city? I don't know, just something that personally bothered me.

Overall this is by no means a terrible movie, but it is painfully generic and the visuals don't always mesh the greatest. I also wish we got a more genuine relationship between Clifford and Emily Elizabeth, since that's supposed to be the emotional core of the movie.