For older viewers, though, it may be hard to
ignore some of the clunkier moments of a script
that, in trying to update a story created in 1963,
gets in its own way with dialogue that while
sometimes funny and sweet, can be awkward
and occasionally even off-key.
First, though, the dog. For those who worried that
the CGI version of Clifford wouldn’t look real or
otherwise meet expectations, rest assured that
it’s fine. He’s big, he’s red, he’s furry, he’s sweet —
and as for realism, well, how many elephant-sized,
ruby-red dogs do YOU know? Plus: he doesn’t
speak human. This is a good thing.
And the cast is game, led by sweetly-but-not-
obnoxiously precocious, red-headed Camp and
rakishly likable British comedian Jack Whitehall as
Emily Elizabeth’s ne’er-do-well Uncle Casey. There
are also a bunch of “Saturday Night Live” actors
in cameos — with the funniest, not surprisingly,
coming from the gifted Kenan Thompson as
a veterinarian tasked with examining Clifford.
(How does one take the temperature of a
Tyrannosaurus-sized pup? He doesn’t
know, either.)
Emily Elizabeth is older here than the little girl
in the original book and PBS animated series;
she’s a sixth-grader, and a new student at an
elite Manhattan academy on Fifth Avenue. She
lives a subway ride uptown with her mother, a
harried single mom, in what the production notes
call a “quaint Harlem apartment” but is actually
huge, airy and comfy — it can hide Clifford! Still,
at Emily’s posh school, which she attends on
scholarship — having moved “from upstate” —
she feels alone, and the resident Mean Girl calls
her “Food Stamp.”