“Clifford the Red Big Dog” hit theaters and had kids of all ages bumped to see the movie on Nov. 10, 2021. The film follows a magical story of a girl named Emily Elizabeth (Darby Camp) who finds a red little dog, and her wish comes true from pure love and friendship.

The film follows Emily in New York City as she finds this tiny red dog who she names Clifford. Because of her love and affection, he grows to this abnormally large size. Clifford didn’t get to meet his mother because his mother was sent to the pound by the animal rescue team at the start of the movie. If they added this clip of Clifford seeing his mom towards the end this would have set up a different ending to Clifford and probably would have shown the backstory of Clifford how he became red.

The plot is that Emily wants to make Clifford small again to prevent the evil company Lifegro from experimenting on Clifford. She builds friendships with the fellow neighbors from her apartment and the local people of New York City to help out saving Clifford. Throughout the film, she gains a lot of confidence being around her uncle Casey and Clifford. She was shy and didn’t have much confidence at first and she was always bullied by the girls at school calling her “Food Stamps.” What I thought was weird in this film is that at the end of the movie the CGI for Clifford was all messed up. Some of the pixels on the screen at the movie theater were out of place, which I thought was rare.

Now is this movie worth the watch if you couldn’t get the first scene from the movie where Clifford is hiding under the blankets and his family gets taken to the pound. I will be honest; as a teenager, I can go into a children’s movie and still enjoy myself if it’s done well, so when the movie starts off you can hear that whimsical Jerry Goldsmith-like score from the early 90s and 2000s. At this moment I feel like I’m watching “Stuart Little.” When I first saw Clifford you would think to yourself “he looks terrible.” Using CGI was distracting; right off the bat, that was something I didn’t enjoy in the movie since I am getting distracted by how the dog looks in the film. Another detail I didn’t like in the film was when we meet Emily. She was eating some cereal but the cereal is honeycomb cereal and is directly in the middle of the frame showing right at the camera so for about five minutes throughout the movie it was just the camera showing the honeycomb box as it switched in between clips. It couldn’t get any worse when she talks with her mother and there are different angles, but when they show the cereal the angle of the cereal keeps changing so that’s it in the middle of the frame. I’m lost at this part of the movie. Most of the CGI effects and clip angles are misplaced. I don’t feel like I’m watching a movie. I just see a disingenuous, not even a film, just a movie for kids to enjoy.
What could have been changed and what needed to be implemented and how this movie could have been a 5-star rating. What confused me the most is why Emily didn’t just stand up for herself. It was like everyone was chasing after Emily, and they wanted to listen to the person with the most money. She should have just stood up for herself and spoke out to the crowd and told them the truth but at this time in the movie, no one believed her because the evil corporation bribed the police to get their way. I thought that would’ve been cool if she did stand up for Clifford towards the end. There’s a part that shows that but it’s pretty short and it doesn’t show her standing up; they just all believe her. Also, it’s a genuinely well-behaved dog and a lot of people get behind the fact that she should set up and stand up and fight for her right for her dog when this big biotech company takes that away from her. In these scenes when Clifford gets in the hands of Liegro the evil company, Clifford gets shot with a tracker that showcased what their motivations were and why they’re trying to take Clifford away, which we saw in that story a thousand times. We have never seen someone riding a dog running down a highway. I thought that was scary and cool at the same time and an awesome feature they implemented into the film.

There are some silly moments that make the movie special and that’s the simplicity of a little girl and a red big dog even when the movie started to lose me due to the dialogue the characters talked wasn’t kids dialogue it was more like pg 13 dialogue you would see in a movie like a marvel franchise. The heart in this movie conveys just the love and passion, not this girl has but her uncle. A funny moment is when Clifford is running through the town and he hits a basketball and he makes it into a hoop. Also when Clifford sees a ball that you run into in the park he thinks of that as fetch so he throws the ball. Also in the movie when they are crowded around the little girl some people are saying to kill the dog they are not saying that but that reminded me of the scene in “Spiderman” where the people of New York are throwing stuff at Green Goblin. I expected the movie to be more magical but it did not exceed my expectations due to more of the CGI and bad frame clips in the movie overall I would give the movie a 2 out of 5 stars.