Review: 'Ghostbusters: Afterlife' is too haunted by its franchise's history, and its fans' limited imaginations, to deliver anything truly exciting

I can pinpoint the exact moment when I gave up on “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” when I knew that director Jason Reitman had no intention of creating something original within the universe begun with his dad Ivan’s 1984 action comedy.

I’d say “spoiler alert” here, but it’s hard to spoil a moment that’s the focus of the movie’s marketing campaign. It’s the moment where They show up — and you know exactly who They are, because everything that Jason Reitman and his co-screenwriter, Gil Kenan, have laid in place sets us up for when They enter the picture.

It’s too bad, because the idea that starts this film showed the promise of taking the familiar franchise in an interesting direction — just as intriguing as director Paul Feig’s unfairly maligned 2016 variation, and with as much potential for laughs and excitement.

Callie (Carrie Coon) is a single mom with two sharp kids — perpetually mortified 15-year-old Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), and 12-year-old science nerd Phoebe (McKenna Grace). The family is broke, and their last hope is an inheritance from Callie’s estranged and now deceased father: A dilapidated farm in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma. We are not supposed to know who Callie’s father was, though it’s pretty obvious just looking at Phoebe’s curly black hair and oversized eyeglasses.

The clues pile up when Phoebe finds a still-functioning PKE meter, which guides her to her grandfather’s underground workshop, where a proton pack awaits repairs. Meanwhile, Trevor goes out to the barn and finds a rundown old car — a Cadillac hearse with a familiar red circular logo on the doors and the ECTO-1 license plate.

These Easter eggs and many others will make the diehard “Ghostbusters” fans feel right at home. So will Paul Rudd’s appearance as a summer school teacher who provides plot exposition to tell Phoebe about the Manhattan ghost appearances of the 1980s, thwarted by the OG Ghostbusters (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and the late Harold Ramis), whose videotaped exploits live forever on YouTube.

When Reitman focuses on the kids, the movie soars. There’s a great action set piece where Trevor is driving the Ecto-1, while Phoebe wields a proton pack from the vehicle’s gunner seat — a surprise to Phoebe’s ghost-obsessed new friend, Podcast (Logan Kim), as much as it is to us — as they chase a ghost through the streets of their new Oklahoma town. If the whole movie could be like that, this would be a fun and exciting thrill ride.

For a minute, even the grown-ups bring something to the table. Rudd does his patented funny Everyman thing, which still works like a charm. And Coon brings some real emotion to bear, dealing with her pent-up grief and anger at the father she never knew. But Coon and Rudd get sucked into the nostalgia machinery, starting when Rudd’s character is menaced by tiny marshmallow-based creatures in a WalMart.

The rabid fans of the original “Ghostbusters” won’t care — they get to see their beloved franchise just the way they like it, without trying to add anything fresh like the 2016 version where all the Ghostbusters were, gasp, women. That version, those fans declared, ruined their childhoods, but “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” does something worse: It traps those fans within their arrested childhoods, giving them everything they want and nothing they don’t expect.

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‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’

★★

Opening Friday, November 19, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for supernatural action and some suggestive references. Running time: 124 minutes.

Review: 'King Richard' highlights Will Smith and other strong performances, in a straight-ahead account of Venus and Serena Williams' early tennis days

Even as it stays carefully within the lines of a standard sports biography, “King Richard” delivers its emotional punch in some unexpected ways — thanks largely to the performances by Will Smith, Aunjunue Ellis and two promising newcomers.

Smith plays Richard Williams, a former athlete living in Compton, Calif., in the early 1990s with his wife, Brandy (played by Ellis), and their large family. Williams, a tennis coach who obsessively studies every famous coach’s tapes, is pouring everything he knows into two of his daughters — Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton). Knowing those names, you already know how this story ends, with the stellar careers of two of the greatest tennis players to ever pick up a racquet.

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green (“Joe Bell”) and first-time screenwriter Zach Baylin look at what happens before that. It shows Richard taking his family to the cracked concrete tennis courts in his neighborhood, drilling Venus and Serena while their siblings do their homework — then getting home so Venus and Serena can get their homework done, as well. 

The movie also shows the elder Williams trying to convince top-level coaches to take the girls in as prospects. First, he convinces coach Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn), who’s worked with the likes of John McEnroe and Pete Sampras, to teach Venus. 

It’s Cohen who convinces Richard to let Venus compete in some juniors tournaments, where she tears up southern California’s pre-teen tennis hierarchy. At one point, Serena sneaks behind Dad’s back and registers for a juniors tourney — and she shows herself to be as strong a competitor as Venus. “You got the next Michael Jordan,” someone tells Richard at one point, and he replies, “I got the next two.”

Later in the story, Richard gets a recruiting pitch from Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal), who’s developed a tennis academy in Florida, and wants the Williams family to relocate so Venus and Serena can train there. Macci lures the family to Florida, but he soon grows frustrated with Richard’s opinions, and his demand that Venus and Serena drop out of juniors tournaments, and focus on Venus turning pro at age 14.

Baylin’s script, a 2018 honoree of The Black List (a Hollywood industry compilation of the best unproduced screenplays), lays down some sharp commentary about the tennis world, from the self-loathing pre-teen players display when they lose a point to the high stakes gamesmanship of athletic shoe contracts. First and foremost, though, it’s a solid story about family, and the sacrifices Richard and Brandy make to ensure their children’s future is better than their present.

Smith gives a powerful performance, capturing the human dynamo that Richard Williams is (as evidenced by the unnecessary closing-credits video of the real Williams), a blend of paternal love and cagey calculation. He’s nicely matched by Ellis (so memorable in “Lovecraft Country”), who fights to protect her girls from anyone who might impede them — even if that might be Richard. And newcomers Sidney and Singleton balance the intensity of Venus and Serena with the joy of being kids who know that their parents love them, no matter how they fare on the court.

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‘King Richard’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, November 19, in theaters everywhere, and streaming on HBO Max. Rated PG-13 for some violence, strong language, a sexual reference and brief drug references. Running time: 137 minutes.

Review: 'The Souvenir: Part II' continues director Joanna Hogg's beautiful exploration of a young woman confronting her grief and finding her artistic voice

Two years after she made one of the best coming-of-age dramas in recent memory in “The Souvenir,” writer-director Joanna Hogg does it again with the well-observed and beautiful “The Souvenir Part II” — which is, as you may have guessed, a continuation of the same story.

It’s helpful to watch “The Souvenir,” because Hogg picks up where the first movie left off, and she frequently references what happened in the earlier film. That movie ended — unavoidable spoiler coming — with shy ‘80s London film student Julie Harte (Honor Swinton Byrne) reeling from the death by suicide of her boyfriend Anthony, who hid his heroin addiction for much of their relationship.

After some time retreating to her parents’ home, where her mum (Swinton Burke’s real mother, the great actor Tilda Swinton) and dad (James Spencer Ashworth) try to be understanding. Mum also tries to distract Julie by talking about her latest hobby, making pottery.

Eventually, Julie returns to university — borrowing more money from Mum first — and joining her classmates in working grunt work at a movie studio in between shooting their own short films. This allows Julie to meet a brooding actor (“Stranger Things’” Charlie Heaton) with whom , and to talk to Patrick (Richard Ayoade), the music-video director who knew of Anthony’s addictions long before she did.

After feeling aimless, Julie decides the way to understand why Anthony killed himself, and how he hid his addiction so long, is to make a movie about their time together. At first, Julie’s floundering. Her professors say her script is too vague, without enough simple directions. Her producing partner (Jaygann Ayeh) is flummoxed that she rejects the actors he suggests, casting instead a French film student, Garance (Ariane Labed), as her character — and Garance complains that the character is “too naive, too fragile.”  Meanwhile, her other classmates, who become her crew, berate her for being indecisive.

Thus, Hogg manages a thoughtful twofer: Examining Julie’s processing of grief, and following the way an artist finds her voice. She does so by expanding the small, detailed canvas of the first “Souvenir” — which focused tightly on how Julie molded herself to fit Anthony’s mentorship — and gives Julie room to discover who she really is as an adult.

Amid a strong supporting cast, notably Swinton as Julie’s eager-to-comfort mom and Ayoade as an untethered filmmaker, Swinton Byrne shines. She turns Julie from a receptacle for other people’s ideas — her mom’s, her therapist’s, her classmates’, and those of Anthony’s memory — into a fully blossoming woman who takes that input and creates her own reality.

The collaboration between Hogg and Swinton Byrne is so sharply focused that it raises an intriguing question: Would we want a “Part III,” to follow the next part of Julie’s story? Or should they leave things as they stand, and start afresh on a different story? The thought-provoking beauty of “The Souvenir: Part II” is that either option sounds like a good one.

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‘The Souvenir Part II’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 19, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for some strong sexuality, and language. Running time: 107 minutes.

Review: Disney's 'Encanto' creates a magical house, and a fascinating set of characters to inhabit it

The bright and breezy “Encanto” is, we’re told by the studio logo, the 60th animated feature to come out of the Walt Disney Studios — and it carries the hallmarks of that brand, of a simple story told beautifully.

In a picturesque valley in Colombia, everyone comes over to see what’s happening with the Madrigals, the most prosperous family in the village. The Madrigals arrived in the village 50 years ago, on the run from bandits, according to the matriarch, Abuela Alma (voiced by Maria Cecilia Botero), and her three babies each were given a magical gift: Pepa (voiced by Carolina Gaitan) changes the weather with her moods, Julieta (voiced by Angie Cepeda) can heal with her cooking, and Bruno (voiced by John Leguizamo)… well, “we don’t talk about Bruno,” as it says in one of the bouncy songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The gifts go down to the next generation. Julieta’s daughter Luisa (voiced by Jessica Darrow) can lift a dozen donkeys at once, while her middle daughter Isabela (voiced by Diane Guerrero) makes flowers appear wherever her perfect hair swishes. Only Julieta’s youngest daughter, Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz) is without a magical gift, so she tries to compensate by being as helpful as she can — even under Abuela’s disapproving eye.

When Mirabel’s cousin Antonio (voiced by Ravi Cabot-Conyers) is about to undergo the ceremony where he receives his magical gift, Mirabel has a vision of the Madrigal casita developing cracks and threatening the candle that is the fount of the family’s magic. Abuela doesn’t want to hear it, and doesn’t believe Mirabel, which makes the girl even more determined to figure out what’s going wrong. Mirabel is sure the answer lies in the family’s most enduring mystery: What happened to Bruno?

Directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard (who filled the same jobs on “Zootopia”) create a rich color palette for the Madrigal’s casita — and for the fanciful animation during several of the musical numbers. The sharpest animation work is in depicting the casita, whose floorboard and roof tiles move in rhythm, keeping the Madrigal family on time and on task throughout their busy days.

The script, by Bush and co-director Charise Castro Smith (a playwright making her movie debut), is smart and soulful. It takes the story into some unexpected directions, and finds both the dark and light in several of the main characters — aided by Miranda’s song score, which deliver the clever wordplay, tricky rhythms and emotional punch one expects form the man who wrote “Hamilton” and “In the Heights.”

“Encanto” is, as its name suggests, quite enchanting in its depiction of a family dealing with external crises and internal strife — but weathering them together, to the beat of the music.

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‘Encanto’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, November 24, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for some thematic elements and some mild peril. Running time: 99 minutes; plus a 7-minute short, “Far From the Tree.”

Review: Lin-Manuel Miranda lets his theater-kid flag fly in 'tick, tick... BOOM!,' adapting the late Jonathan Larson's pre-'Rent' autobiography

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me so much sooner — maybe the first time I listened to my “Hamilton” CD or saw the movie adaptation of “In the Heights” — that Lin-Manuel Miranda is perhaps the most famous Broadway nerd in America, no matter how many hip-hop passages or Nuyorican rhythms he apples to his work.

Miranda gives his theater-kid side free rein in his movie directing debut, the quarter-life musical ’tick, tick… BOOM!” — the story that Miranda has said in interviews inspired him to keep pursuing a stage career when he was a struggling college student.

The movie begins with a big spoiler, when it shows itself to be the musical autobiography Jonathan Larson, written before his blockbuster musical “Rent” premiered on Broadway, then won a Pulitzer and several Tonys. Larson, though, wasn’t there to enjoy it; he died from an aortic aneurysm on the day of “Rent’s” first preview performance, a couple weeks’ shy of his 36th birthday.

Miranda doesn’t hide this information — not that he could, since it’s the stuff of Broadway legend — but uses it to add a layer of tragedy to the story, in which Larson (played by Andrew Garfield) describes to a theater audience the story of his life just before his 30th birthday.

It’s the start of 1990, and Larson is feeling the pressure of his birthday odometer clicking over from his exuberant 20s to his have-to-be-an-adult-now 30s. He has been writing a dystopian science-fiction musical for years, and is days away from having it performed at a workshop where important producers — and his idol, the composer Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford) — will see it on its feet for the first time, and his agent (Judith Light) won’t return his calls. Also, he’s missing a strong song for his female lead for Act II, and is running out of time to write it.

Larson’s also feeling the pressure from his girlfriend, Susan (Alexandra Shipp), a modern dancer who’s been offered a teaching job in the Berkshires and wants Larson to commit to leaving his rattrap Manhattan apartment to be with her. Meanwhile, his best friend, Michael (Robin de Jesús), has taken a corporate job with an ad agency — and Larson isn’t sure whether to stick to his art or sell out for the money. Also, Larson is watching many of his gay friends falling to the AIDS epidemic, and the fear being stoked by right-wing politicians, and feels like a real artist would be writing about it.

Miranda and screenwriter Steven Levenson (who also wrote the book and screenplay for “Dear Evan Hansen,” but don’t hold that against him) build up the artistic and personal tension in Larson’s life and work masterfully, usually grounding the musical numbers in reality, either with Garfield’s Larson singing and performing at the piano with his show-within-a-show’s cast — led by Vanessa Hudgens and Joshua Henry, both brilliant — or with Garfield in soliloquy. 

The one number that’s an exception is a self-contained masterpiece of Broadway love, “Sunday,” a bravura life-in-a-day number depicting Larson’s work as a waiter at a New York diner during the Sunday brunch rush. What’s spectacular is the roster of diners, a Who’s Who of Broadway legends including Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Andre de Shields, Joel Grey, “Hamilton” leading ladies Renee Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Sou, and three members of the original cast of “Rent”: Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Wilson Jermaine Heredia. Surely, a combination of Miranda’s reputation and Larson’s memory brought everyone out to be a part of it.

The supporting performances by de Jesús and Shipp are first-rate. Hudgens, who’s been singing since her “High School Musical” days and keeps improving, steals every scene she’s in — particularly in a motormouthed duet with Garfield, “Therapy,” that describes Larson’s arguments with Susan. 

Garfield, though this is his first time singing in a movie, throws himself whole-heartedly into the role, and the results are wonderful. Even when Larson is at his most selfish and navel-gazing, Garfield brings warmth and humanity to the moment.

It may be cruel to assign a movie’s faults to a dead man, but the weakness in “tick, tick… BOOM!” is Larson’s story and song score. In a story about an artist finding his voice, we’re constantly reminded of other characters, most of them LGBTQ and suffering from AIDS and government-sanctioned homophobia, whose voices are relegated to the background. Larson may get to those characters, as he did in “Rent” — and your mileage may vary on how well he succeeded in that much-lauded rewrite of “La Bohème” — but he’s too much in the foreground here.

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’tick, tick… BOOM!”

★★★

Opens Friday, November 12, in select theaters; streaming on Netflix starting Friday, November 19. Rated PG-13 for some strong language, some suggestive material and drug references. Running time: 115 minutes.

Review: 'Home Sweet Home Alone' is a hopelessly misguided remake of the Christmas classic

It’s a bold move, I suppose, to remake a beloved Christmas comedy and invert the roles — where the pre-teen hero is now the loathsome villain, and the scummy bad guys are now sympathetic characters. Doomed, but bold, as “Home Sweet Home Alone” demonstrates with every terrible step.

We will leave unresolved the discussion about whether the 1990 comedy “Home Alone” is a good movie or merely a much-loved one. At least in the original, one could forgive young Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) for being a little needy and attention-starved as his chaotic family was preparing for a Christmastime trip to Paris — because it was clear he was being bullied by his older brother Buzz (Devin Ratray). (In a failed attempt at social commentary, the new movie reveals that Buzz, the only character from the original to appear here, grew up to become a cop.)

In this movie, 10-year-old Max Mercer has no such excuse. Played by Archie Yates, the hapless young sidekick in “Jojo Rabbit,” Max is an obnoxious brat, constantly making life hard for his mom, Carol (Aisling Bea), as the family prepares to leave suburban Chicago during the holidays.

And the Mercers, living in their McMansion and with the means to fly to Tokyo, have it easy compared to another family, the McKenzies. Pam McKenzie (Ellie Kemper) is a teacher, husband Jeff (Rob Delaney) is a recently unemployed tech dude, and they’re desperately trying to hide from their children (Katie Beth Hall and Max Ivutin) that they’re selling their house.

The McKenzies — while entertaining Jeff’s rich and jerky brother Hunter (Timothy Simons) and Hunter’s high-maintenance wife, Mei (Ally Maki) — then learn that a porcelain doll Jeff inherited from his mom could be worth $200,000, seemingly an answer to the family’s money problems. When the doll goes missing, the McKenzies suspect that bratty little Max stole it when he and Carol checked out their open house. 

Thus sets up the premise, in which the McKenzies try to break into the house, only to find Max — left behind by his family — has set up booby traps aplenty. Cue the cartoonish mayhem.

A whole lot of people can share the blame for this trainwreck. Let’s start with the screenwriters, “Saturday Night Live” cast member Mikey Day and “SNL” writer Streeter Seidell, whose only contributions to John Hughes’ original are some elbow-in-the-ribs jokes about remaking old movies and a toothless finale that waves away the preceding destruction of the Mercer front hallway. Equally culpable is director Dan Mazer (“Dirty Grandpa”), who tries for the Roadrunner-vs.-Coyote spirit that the original’s Chris Columbus brought out, but doesn’t have the slightest idea how to execute the gags.

Kemper and Delaney, two usually reliable comic talents, are left with nothing to do but make faces as they succumb to the many pratfalls. Meanwhile, several talented comic performers, including Kenan Thompson, Chris Parnell and Andrew Daly, are given nothing funny to do. 

Worst of all, Mazer never allows young Yates to display any of the self-deprecating charm that made his debut in “Jojo Rabbit” so memorable. This kid would have been better off if he had been left home alone. 

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‘Home Sweet Home Alone’

★

Available for streaming starting Friday, November 12, on Disney+. Rated PG for slapstick violence, rude material and some language. Running time: 93 minutes.

Review: In 'Belfast,' director Kenneth Branagh tells a warm, personal story of childhood in Northern Ireland

The hardest moment in childhood is when you realize your parents aren’t superheroes, all-powerful beings with the ability to make all problems disappear — and Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical memory play “Belfast” beautifully captures life just before that moment.

After showing what Belfast looks like today, in living color, Branagh takes us back to August 15, 1969 — and, in black and white, depicts a happy summer day on the street where 8-year-old Buddy (played by newcomer Jude Hill) plays St. George with a wooden sword and a dustbin-lid shield. Then real fighting interrupts the reverie, as young thugs come down the street to target the homes of the Catholics living there. Buddy’s family is Protestant, but his Pa (Jamie Dornan) doesn’t subscribe to the terror tactics of the mob. Unfortunately, Pa is in London, where the jobs are, leaving Ma (Caitriona Balfe) to fend off the thugs’ extortion demands.

Buddy notices the changes in the neighborhood, as barricades go up and everyone gets questioned before entering the street. Being 8, though, he’s got other pressing concerns — like scoring well on his weekly maths exam, so he can be seated closer to the smart Catholic girl he has a crush on. Or hearing the romantic advice of his grandfather, known as Pop (Ciarán Hinds), and how he met Granny (Judi Dench) all those years ago.

Branagh, who wrote and directed, moves from memory to memory, of reading comic books and going to the movies, of getting sucked into petty crime by his cousins, of regretting it even before he’s caught. The boy gets glimpses of bigger problems, whether it’s from news reports on the radio or the barely understood arguments his parents have about possibly leaving Belfast because of the joblessness, poverty and growing threat of sectarian violence. 

Branagh leans reliably on the music of Belfast native Van Morrison, and references the TV and movies as markers of both the era and the emotions. “Star Trek” represents the promise of the future, while the British marionette adventure “Thunderbirds Are Go” is an icon of heroic helpers, and “High Noon” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” telegraph the moral battle Pa is being drawn into for the sake of his family. Bursts of color pierce the black-and-white images, when young Buddy experiences the wonder of the movies (a clip from “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”) or the joys of the theater (with Branagh’s late friend, John Sessions, as a hammy theatrical version of Marley’s ghost).

Dornan and Balfe are nicely paired as Buddy’s parents, with Dornan’s quiet resolve contrasting nicely with Balfe’s more emotional outbursts. Hinds and Dench are delightful, as Buddy’s grandparents dispense hard-won wisdom and show by their example the joys of a long marriage. 

Like John Boorman’s “Hope and Glory” or Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma,” Branagh’s “Belfast” is an imperfect recollection, since the light of history is refracted through the distorting lens of childhood. But the memories are sweet and magical, and it’s difficult to begrudge Branagh’s desire to live them again.

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‘Belfast’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some violence and strong language. Running time: 98 minutes.

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.

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‘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.