All up, it's a spirited and unpretentious film with some engagingly eccentric bits, the best of which involve Izaac Wang.

It's a live-action world, though Clifford is a computer-animated dog, which fills the whole enterprise with unfortunate echoes of the "Tom & Jerry" movie from earlier this year.

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.

...an affable (albeit entirely forgettable) family-friendly comedy that benefits from its brisk pace and assortment of appealing, charismatic performances...