I love this movie so much

Pretty Good

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The incredibly talented Martin Short crosses the line here in an obvious home alone rip-off where he attempts to play an adolescent who happens to be the biggest demon child since "The Omen's" Damian, no medication invented to give him time out. An equally obnoxious uncle and his ridiculously naive fiancée are forced into Clifford's mad world which surrounds revenge because uncle Groton didn't take the vicious kid to dinosaur world. Even as an apparent fable told to a brat in the far off future can't hide the fact that there is truly nothing funny here and that short is over-the-top obnoxious and totally unbelievable. Poor Steenburgen, always lovely, seems embarrassed by all goings on, and Dabney Coleman ("Nine to Five's" comically evil boss) is totally misused in another male chauvinist pig role. Do yourself and your kids a favor and stick to the original "Our Gang" series.

I love Clifford. It's always been one of my favorite comedies. If you don't understand this type of humor, well, I feel sorry for you. I do get it. My sister and I passed our love for this movie to my kids and they love it too. How can people say that Martin Short isn't a ten year old boy?? Duh, he's not! It's a character!!! I guess Mark Hamill isn't a Jedi...or Anthony Hopkins isn't a cannibalistic killer. It's a character, and a damn funny one at that! I feel so strongly about this; that this is the first review I've ever posted on here. I found out that is has to be ten lines or more, so I'm just filling space now.

As I sit in front of my computer monitor, I am trying very hard to sort out all of the extremely bizarre things that I witnessed in "Clifford" and write down just how exactly the movie fails. Okay, I paused for a moment after writing that last sentence, and I think I can start listing the movie's errors in judgement, and they all center around the title character. The character of Clifford simply does not work. Though he's supposed to be a 10 year-old boy, he is not convincing as one. He has a lot of bizarre adult-sounding dialogue that doesn't sound like it's coming from a real boy. Maybe his bizarre lingo was supposed to be funny, but I didn't laugh once hearing it. His comic mischief is also supposed to be funny, but isn't. It comes across as coming from a cruel, hateful individual who doesn't seem to be misguided or have a proper sense of humor. The various tricks to make Martin Short fit his character don't work as well. As an old man in the wraparound segments, he looks ghastly in his old age makeup. As a child, he looks like an adult in children's clothing despite efforts by the special effects team to make him appear to be shorter.Grodin, Steenburgen, and Coleman (who actually looks good sporting a beard) do what they can, but are hampered by the unfunny script and a director who doesn't seem to realize this was an ill-conceived project. The movie's unique failure at times makes it watchable in a car-wreck sort of fashion, but eventually becomes tiresome.

This is one of my favorite movies. I am longtime SCTV fan, in fact, it's my favorite show. Still, I think this movie works on a level outside the initial viewing and comparison to usual movies. The character Clifford is the archetypal prankster child that has probably lived in all of us. You can look at it in a Jungian psychological way -- Clifford has the Trickster archetype in full swing. He's also an example of the Fruedian Id without a Superego. When I first watched it, I didn't think it was that great, in fact, you might even say that I can understand why others gave it a lower rating. But when you look at the larger forces at play in the movie, it may become very enjoyable.