Clifford wasn’t always big. It’s the colossal love of his new owner, 12-year-old Emily Elizabeth (Darby Camp of Big Little Lies) that transforms the red Andrex puppy with velvet CGI fur from the size of a child’s slipper into a cuddly, 10ft giant. “It’s New York, no one will notice,” insists Jack Whitehall’s irresponsible Uncle Casey in this benign live-action adaptation of Norman Bridwell’s popular picture books. Whitehall adopts an American accent, only to break into his natural voice to annoying comic effect.
Emily Elizabeth’s private school classmates nickname her “food stamps”; the underlying class commentary is awkwardly executed. The film is best when it sticks to children’s caper mode, jostled along by gentle toilet humour, bad-tempered barnyard animals and a scene of two kids driving a van across Manhattan.
