Clifford tricks Martin into taking the train from LA to San Francisco while Clifford throws a massive destructive party in Martin’s home for a random assortment of surfer bros who agree to take Clifford to Dinosaur World in payment. Martin and Sarah have a fight, after which Mr. Ellis tries to force himself upon Sarah in a limousine in one of the most uncomfortable and inexplicable depictions of attempted assault in a movie meant for children. Sarah fights off Ellis’ advances and rips the wig off his head.
An enraged Martin returns home to lock Clifford up in his room while Martin attempts to finish his project. After one last act of sabotage by Clifford that causes the project to literally go up in flames, Martin snaps and drags a bound Clifford to Dinosaur World for some revenge. Martin straps Clifford into one of the rides and gradually increases the speed as Clifford goes around the loop over and over in a light-hearted bout of child torture. The ride eventually malfunctions and Martin has to make the objectively incorrect choice to save the life of his psychopath nephew. Clifford atones for his sins, and the two reconcile at Martin and Sarah’s wedding with the most awful on-screen cheek-kiss you’ve ever seen from an adult man to another adult dressed as a little boy.
It truly cannot be overstated how annoying, insidious, and unlikable Martin Short’s character is in this movie. Even if an age-appropriate actor was chosen, the dark, cynical, psychopathic nature of this film that was apparently meant for children still would have made Clifford a 90-minute exercise in audience abuse. Martin Short’s horribly off-putting 40 year-old facial expressions are just an extra kick to the groin in this joyless and grating monstrosity.
While visually and sonically upsetting, the film did have a small handful of genuinely funny moments, despite the jokes being completely out of place in a children’s movie – in this scene, Martin and Clifford pull up to a gas station where Clifford spots a van headed to Dinosaur World. While Martin is distracted, Clifford follows a child dressed in a full-body T-Rex costume into the bathroom where he gives the kid a fat wad of cash that Clifford stole from his uncle in return for the dinosaur costume. After donning his new disguise, Clifford jumps in the Dinosaur World-bound van. Martin finds the other child in the bathroom dressed in Clifford’s clothes and sniffs out the plot, and when the other child’s mother confronts Martin about the whereabouts of her son, Martin tells her “The last time I saw him, he was counting the money that he made in the men’s room.”
Legendary film critic Roger Ebert was among the overwhelming majority of viewers to have an intensely negative reaction to Clifford when he gave the film two thumbs down and, in summarizing its awfulness, he said, “I’d love to hear a symposium of veteran producers, marketing guys and exhibitors discuss this film. It’s not bad in any usual way. It’s bad in a new way all its own. There is something extraterrestrial about it, as if it’s based on the sense of humor of an alien race with a completely different relationship to the physical universe. The movie is so odd, it’s almost worth seeing just because we’ll never see anything like it again. I hope.”
Thankfully, Anna Konkle and Maya Erskine didn’t listen to him. PEN15 succeeds at the strange setup of adults playing children because the awkward visual of a 5’7” Konkle fawning over a very twelve year old child is supposed to make you cringe – at no point is the audience meant to think that the leads aren’t played by adults. Somehow, the lunatics behind Clifford thought that Martin Short was going to be so convincing that audiences would forget that it’s a 40 year-old man humping Mary Steenburgen’s leg and not the most hateable child on the planet.
For exclusive ComedyNerd content and more, subscribe to our spiffy newsletter:
Get More Comedy: Sign up for ComedyNerd
The ComedyNerd newsletter is your weekly look at the world of stand up, sketch, and more. Sign up now!