Despite being panned by critics upon release, Martin Short always knew Clifford would be appreciated someday.
Clifford is an extraordinary movie, and no, I’m not talking about the one with the big red dog, but rather the one where a nearly forty-year-old Martin Short plays a psychotic ten-year-old. The film is a simple one, telling the story of a young boy who is forced to stay with his uncle while his parents are on a business trip in Honolulu, but it is positively weird, full of unhinged dark comedy, slapstick, and extremely quotable moments. I still pull out, “Look at me like a human boy!” on a semi-regular basis. The film certainly isn’t for everyone, but Martin Short always believed it would be appreciated.
“I never saw any of these things that didn’t work out with the public as failures. [1994 comedy co-starring Charles Grodin] Clifford is a perfect example,” Short told THR. “That was a film that the critics hated, and no one saw but I thought was fabulous. I looked at Clifford as a work of art that will be appreciated someday. I think it’s the Canadian in me that makes you try as hard as you can, prepare as much as you can, and if it doesn’t work out, you toast yourself because you weren’t in control of that. It’s like [director] Larry Kasdan said to me after Silverado came out, which was a brilliant movie. He said, ‘Who knew Westerns were out of style? No one told me.’“
Clifford was originally meant to be released in 1991, but Orion Pictures’ bankruptcy put the film on a shelf for several years. When it was finally released (along with some reshoots for bookend segments featuring an elderly Clifford), the film was immediately eviscerated by critics, including Roger Ebert, who wrote that the film was “not bad in any usual way. It’s bad in a new way all its own… as if it’s based on the sense of humor of an alien race with a completely different relationship to the physical universe.” For some people, that’s a selling point.
“But here’s the thing,” Short explained. “You could have Roger Ebert, God love him, review a Taylor Swift concert. He might say, ‘I don’t get it.’ And you’re going, ‘Well, it’s not for you, Roger.’ Clifford is a weird movie for 23-year-old stoners. Not that it was my intention, by the way, to make it for 23-year-old stoners, but those are the people who would come up to me and talk about it.“
Is Clifford an underappreciated comedy, or were those original reviews right on the money?