As the film relocates the action to NYC, Emily Elizabeth and co try to keep Clifford out of the hands of a nefarious company
Author Norman Bridwell’s picture book series about Clifford the Big Red Dog represented a wholesome slice of mid-century Americana, with the self-explanatorily named title character, an enormous vermillion hound, loved and cared for by his owner Emily Elizabeth Howard, perhaps in the way an
American dad of the period would have loved and cared for a Cadillac. A few TV series based on the story moved with the times but largely stuck to the kiddie-centric, suburban world of the books.
This reboot feature film has clearly taken its inspiration from the peerless Paddington films, which cleverly updated classic children’s literature property by resituating the setting to contemporary
London, idealistically envisioned as a multicultural melange populated by lovable eccentrics. So here we have Clifford as a creature of
New York City’s much-less-mean-than-they-used-to-be streets, depicted as another ethnically diverse yet entirely harmonious metropolitan utopia. After being whelped in an abandoned building and accidentally separated from his mum and siblings, Clifford passes through the hands of kindly animal vendor Mr Bridwell (John Cleese) before he ends up adopted by Emily Elizabeth (Darby Camp, who is genuinely brilliant at selling the idea that she can see a giant CGI dog in front of her).