Review: 'Clifford the Big Red Dog' is a children's movie made with sincerity and good humor

I can be as cynical as the next critic, but even I can tell when a children’s movie is doing its job, weaving its movie magic with sincerity and a minimum of phony emotions or toilet humor — the way “Clifford the Big Red Dog” does.

Clifford, as most parents know, is the giant pooch, with fur the color of a fire truck, created by Norman Bridwell in a series of children’s books first published in 1963. His main personality traits are that he’s friendly, hard on the furniture, and intensely loyal to his human, a little girl named Emily Elizabeth.

In this version, Clifford is a tiny puppy left behind when Animal Control officers take in his mama and siblings. The pup makes his way to New York’s Central Park, where he’s befriended by a kindly old man named Mr. Bridwell, portrayed by the great John Cleese (who is also the narrator).

Emily Elizabeth, played by Darby Camp, is a sixth-grader living in Manhattan with her mom, Maggie (Sienna Guillory), a paralegal. When Maggie has to go to Chicago to help with a legal case, she reluctantly calls her irresponsible brother, Casey (Jack Whitehall) — who lives in the moving van in which he took his furniture when his girlfriend dumped him — to babysit for a couple of days.

Outside Emily Elizabeth’s snooty private school, where the rich girls mock her as a scholarship kid, E.E. and Casey are drawn to a tent, with the sign “Bridwell’s Animal Rescue.” Inside the tent, which looks like where Harry Potter stayed during the Quidditch World Cup, Bridwell has a menagerie of animals, but it’s little Clifford that connects with Emily at first sight. Casey, being the grown-up for once in his life, tells Emily that she can’t keep the puppy — and tells her again when the little doggy sneaks into her backpack and ends up in Maggie and Emily’s apartment.

Emily makes a wish that Clifford was “big and strong, and the world couldn’t hurt us.” The next morning, Clifford is suddenly 10 feet tall — and Emily and Casey have to figure out how to get him to a veterinarian (Kenan Thompson) without arousing the suspicions of the building’s surly super (David Alan Grier).

Soon, though, Clifford’s problems become as big as he is. Even in Manhattan, it’s difficult to hide a dog the size of a bus, so Clifford becomes a viral sensation quite quickly. This attracts the attention of Zac Tieren (Tony Hale), a tech billionaire whose efforts at creating giant genetically modified livestock are threatening to bankrupt him — so harvesting Clifford’s DNA could be the boost his company needs. Tieren mobilizes his security detail faster than you can say “Cruella deVil,” and the chase is on through New York.

Director Walt Becker (whose last movie was the misbegotten “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip”) and five credited screenwriters — a reflection of a near-decade in “development hell” — manage to strike the right balance of slapstick humor and warm tenderness. (Pro tip for filmmakers out there: You can limit the number of flatulence jokes you put in your movie.) The computer animation to create Clifford is well executed, real enough to fit in this live-action world, without diving into the “uncanny valley” where CG characters seem creepily real.

Whitehall, last seen as Emily Blunt’s dandy brother in “Jungle Cruise,” gives a strong comic performance, delivering his character’s one-liners smartly but never losing sight that he’s the immature grown-up in a children’s movie. Young Camp is the heart and soul of “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” authentically showing her love and affection for a computer character who will be added in post-production.

——

‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’

★★★

Opened Wednesday, November 10, in theaters, and streaming on Paramount+. Rated PG for impolite humor, thematic elements and mild action. Running time: 97 minutes.