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Critics Consensus: Ill-conceived and desperately unfunny, Clifford stars Martin Short as a 10-year-old boy. You read that correctly. That's the joke.
Critic Consensus: Ill-conceived and desperately unfunny, Clifford stars Martin Short as a 10-year-old boy. You read that correctly. That's the joke.
All Critics (30) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (3) | Rotten (27)
The kid is obnoxious from start to finish, and the way he fantasizes about his uncle's girlfriend (Mary Steenburgen) is tasteless.
Clifford, starring Martin Short as a precociously nasty 10-year-old, is not a good movie. It's not even good/bad. But Short has a few of those laugh-out-loud moments.
Clifford never quite finds its tone. The course of the plot has an inevitability about it that is about as wearying as it is reassuring... And yet Clifford is intermittently hilarious, mainly thanks to Short's performance.
Hamstrung by a script that is neither funny nor fanciful enough, Clifford just sits on the screen, as flat as last week's seltzer.
Orion serves up another long-on-the-shelf turkey with this gimmicky, poorly conceived comedy.
Now let's have a show of hands: how many want to see Martin Short play a ten-year-old brat who makes everybody miserable and winds up staying with his uncle (Charles Grodin) in Los Angeles for a week?
Short's bizarre casting is the only reason for Clifford to exist. Aside from that, this is an unimaginative, ill-begotten comedy about a bad little boy.
Whether he is pretending to be angelic or flashing satanic looks, Short makes Clifford an often riotous comic creation. And Grodin, with his fussy airs, makes a perfect fall guy.
Worthless from start to finish, Clifford is a supreme disaster -- a film that neither Short, Grodin nor Steenburgen will be adding to their resumes.
Witless slapstick with leering, obnoxious man-child.
A weird movie that could have stood to be weirder still.
A hellish, horrible experience wasting the talents of all involved.
This is one of those family films that just don't work. The use of comedy here is so bad and painful; it made me hate Martin Short afterwards. This film failed as a comedy, it wasn't funny, and the acting and story were horrible. I hated this film as a kid, and I think it's one of the worst family films ever made. I thought that the story was so stupid, and the acting was over the top that it wasn't even fun to watch. Martin Short is horrible here, and honestly I don't get why he's viewed as a comedic genius, he's horrible. This film started out fun, but ended on such a mean spirited note that it ruined the film for me. In the end, the film is a pointless comedy that misses the mark of being memorable, fun and entertaining, because this is a film that ends being mean, because Clifford is just a selfish brat, and you end not caring whatsoever for the character. In fact all you want to do is hit the guy upside the head. This film is not worth your time, and if you're looking for something good you won't find it here. This film was bad, pointless and a total misfire from start to finish. This is just a mean spirited film that doesn't have any charm, and it falls flat. I've avoided other Martin Short films after seeing this, although I saw Mars Attacks because he was a fairly minor character. The guy really creeps me out, and with this film, he really made me feel creeped out. Simply a bad film, not worth your time.
Super Reviewer
The screenplay is not the best, but Clifford have an odd and involving dark humor. Sometimes not so funny, but that call the attention. Fresh.
Still just as funny as I remembered it was when I saw it over 10 years ago. Regardless of its silliness Martin Short does an amazing acting like an impossible to like little kid.
This was back when Martin Short was kinda funny, and didn't make me want to rip his larynx out. It was pretty good if I can recall, like how he makes their plane crash land so they can go to Dinosaur land.
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