‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’ Review: The Agreeable Version of a CGI-Critter-Meets-Live-Action Diversion

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticClifford the Big Red Dog was born in a series of children’s books, the first of which was published in 1963.

In the decades since, the adventures of the scarlet canine mascot-hero have been spun into three popular PBS Kids TV series, a live musical, video games, and the 2004 animated feature “Clifford’s Really Big Movie,” which was adapted from one of the TV series (and did very little business).

All of which is to say that unlikely as it may sound, the new “Clifford the Big Red Dog” is the first really big Clifford movie.

So what does that mean?It means that the film retains some of the benign humanistic qualities of its source, but that it’s also been shoved into the knockabout slapstick high jinks.