Brief Story Line
A young girl named Emily Elizabeth (Darby Camp - The Christmas Chronicles 2 etc) was feeling down as she was being bullied by her school friends. Luckily she still got a good friend named Owen Yu (Izaac Wang - Raya and the Last Dragon etc) to cheer her up. As Emily's mother Maggie (Sienna Guillory - The Warriors Gate etc) had to go on a business trip, she had no choice but to ask her younger brother Casey (Jack Whitehall - Bad Education TV series etc) to babysit Emily.
When Emily met with Mr. Bridwell (John Cleese - A Fish Called Wanda, Shrek movies etc) who ran an animal rescue tent, she immediately felt attached with a cute red colored puppy. Somehow it ended up at Emily's apartment and despite his reluctance, Casey let Clifford the puppy to stay for one night. However, things got out of hand when Clifford magically turned into a giant dog and was found out by Zac Tiernan (Tony Hale - The Mysterious Benedict Society TV series etc), the owner of a company named Lyfegro who wanted to capture Clifford for his own benefit.
So how would the story conclude? You can find them all in this fun family friendly movie.
End of Brief Story Line
As mentioned above, I was interested in watching this movie because of the trailer. And apparently the film was able to give me and my wife plenty of fun with many hilarious moments. For us it was a combination of some witty remarks and irresponsible behaviour of uncle Casey (Jack Whitehall played this role perfectly) with the amusing moments involving giant Clifford. The story itself was very easy to understand and with the kind of attraction from a cute puppy who turned into huge dog, obviously it would be very appealing for children. Which is why the rating for all audience were really spot on, as it is safe for the young while the adults would be entertained by the funny moments.
The special effect was actually pretty decent and I thought they put in a lot of effort in making sure Clifford look realistic enough. And what made this film even more interesting was definitely the support cast. From the minor roles to the main cast, they generally were able to make the movie more enjoyable. Darby Camp was suitable as the lead character and her affection towards Clifford seemed really genuine which made us feel totally attached with them. And Tony Hale was the ideal villain, as with just his expressions we could immediately see him as sneaky guy.
In addition to the names mentioned above, the film was also supported by some people experienced in comedic roles, such as Kenan Thompson (Good Burger, Fat Albert etc), David Alan Grier (Jumanji, Damon TV series etc) and few others. One more face that was familiar to us was Russel Wong (The Joy Luck Club, Vanishing Son TV series etc). This movie was based on children's book series of the same title written by Norman Bridwell which were pretty successful and already made into few animated TV series and movies. This is the first live adaptation which the producers seemed to like as from what I read on the internet, they are planning to do a sequel. Btw the movie was directed by Walt Becker who had experience in directing CGI based movie (Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip) plus some comedy films like Wild Hogs, Van Wilder etc.
As an adventure comedy movie, I thought this was really fun and I felt a nice option to be seen together with the whole family. It had some comedic moments, combined with the adventure of Clifford & Emily, and it even had a villain to make it more exciting plus a non-complicated ending. The duration was also quite short only 96 minutes including closing credit (filled with nice animation) but no mid or post end credit scenes. So if you have the chance to see the movie with your children or just with your couple(though it could prove to be challenging as it is playing at even lesser theaters now), you might end up having fun like we did.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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