The original Clifford show on PBS was a personal favorite of mine growing up. So naturally there was some excitement on my part to see it getting a live-action adaptation after all these years. I figured the format of the cartoon would be difficult to translate into a standalone movie aimed at wider audience, so I was anticipating something entirely original. I must say though, I wasn't expecting anything this strange. The film starts off normally enough with a young, out of place Emily Elizabeth learning the difficulties of owning a ginormous puppy, but quickly gets weird when the megalomaniacal owner of a genetics/biotechnology company wants to experiment on the supersized pooch to unlock the secret of creating giant food and ending the world's hunger crisis. Then there's the stuff going in with John Cleese as some kind of magical pet rescuer who goes around giving people preternatural animals that's honestly a bit creepy if you look too closely at it. Odd though it may be, it at least gets the humor right. Admittedly most of the gags are of the "haha big doggy make big pee and drool" variety, but there are still plenty of less juvenile sources of laughter as well as some genuinely heartfelt moments between the young lead and her CGI canine costar. Truthfully the only thing that bothered me were a couple of jokes that teased adding some profanity to the mix. There's a point where a man is faced with a psychotically aggressive lamb (did I mention this was odd?) and yells "holy sheep," and another where a guy is about to tell someone who doubted him in the past to kiss a certain orifice of his on national television before promptly having the mic ripped away. Both of which are in poor taste for a property designed with children in mind. However, the source material was always a bunch of cute, wholesome fun and for the most part this is too. It loses the educational element and the message about embracing being different falls by the wayside somewhere along the way. Yet, this will definitely entertain the kids while not proving too tortuous for older viewers provided they aren't too jaded, cynical, snobbish, or edgy.