Inspired by the scholastic book series written and published in 1963, Clifford has now become a live-action movie nearly sixty years later. Released in theaters and on the streaming service, Paramount Plus, I was eager for a night in to watch this new movie of a beloved childhood character.

Although this family may be family-friendly, I wouldn’t classify it as a college movie night pick. The film adaption was heart-warming to watch, but the movie had a few major flaws that were hard to overlook.

First, the CGI of Clifford as a puppy. Somehow, in some way, the CGI of the Big Red Dog looked better while he was bigger rather than the first twenty minutes of the movie when he was a puppy before his loving owner found him.

Second, the inconsistency. This film went from very weird dialogue, clearly meant for a younger audience than myself, but then would also have extremely adult jokes that even a child would question. And then there was my least favorite category of strange jokes that were meant to be funny, but certainly just made me cringe whilst watching. However, in complete fairness, I’m sure I was not the desired target audience for this film.

Although, it does seem this adaption of ‘Clifford The Big Red Dog’ accrued lots of varying opinions. According to Rotton Tomatoes, critics acclaim this movie at a 48% percent, whilst the audience score is at a whopping 94%. And quite frankly, in a different turn of events from my normal movie reviews, I would agree with the critics scoring.

I do believe this film would easily pass as a great film for a child under the age of ten, but for anyone else, it would be painfully hard to ignore the clunky portions of the plot and dialogue between characters. The actors all portray the roles well, the majority of the problems I had all stem from the writing of the script.

Even though this film may have not been my favorite this year, I still encourage anyone who is intrigued to give the film a chance to form their own opinion of this re-imagined classic.