Many animated movies and TV shows have been remade into live-action and some of them have been a bit “ruff”. However, Clifford the Big Red Dog, the children’s cartoon that aired from 2000 to 2003 was adapted into a live-action movie smoothly.  Directed by Walt Becker, it is an action-adventure comedy centered around Emily Elizabeth (Darby Camp) and her abnormally large and red-colored dog, Clifford.

The main conflict arises when a failing company named “Life Grow” is trying to figure out a way to grow animals in hopes of lessening the number of animals needed to feed the world. After seeing Clifford on social media, they begin tracking him down so that they can perform tests on Clifford in hopes of figuring out how he grew to apply it to their studies. All the while, Emily and her uncle, Casey (Jack Whitehall), are trying to find the old man who gave them Clifford, in hopes of shrinking him down to his normal size so “Life Grow” has no reason to take Clifford. 

One of the biggest concerns going into the adaptation of Clifford was if the movie makers could make him feel cute and cuddly rather than a red mess of CGI. This concern was brought about from a 2020 image of a CGI Clifford, that tons did not find to be appealing. For the most part, they succeeded. A good comparison to how they handled Clifford’s CGI is the live-action 2002,  “Scooby-Doo,” a movie directed by Raja Gosnell, which does a good job of making Scooby look like an actual. All of the scenes with Clifford look natural, other than the obviously intended contrast of color and size. 

Much of the humor in the movie is directed towards young children; however, there are some moments that anyone can find comical and enjoy. It’s a really great movie to watch with younger relatives. 

Even though the movie is not putting much focus into appealing to more mature audiences, it’s easy to tell that there were some attempts at getting older audiences involved, since the producers knew they could cash in on some nostalgia.

Clifford is a decent watch if you’re feeling nostalgic or like movies with cute animals. The movie definitely isn’t some exciting action movie, but there are many enjoyable aspects including the CGI and comedy, even if the comedy directed at more mature audiences is few and far between. It is included on Paramount Plus with a subscription and is also available for purchase on Amazon Prime Video.

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