Clifford (1994, Paul Flaherty) (Patreon)

41/100

Having apparently lost touch with the zeitgeist at some point, I was unaware that this certified stinker (which I went nowhere near in '94...though I did rush out that same week to see Jimmy Hollywood*, arguably the lesser of the two) has been reclaimed as, if not a misunderstood triumph, then at least a fascinating artifact. Briefly held out some hope for the former, as there's a genuinely terrific absurdist gag right at the outset: Introduced as an elderly priest in the year 2050 (body of the film's a flashback), Clifford, aka Father Cliff, gets hit on the head with a basketball that falls from above, collapses, gets up, is immediately hit on the head with a suitcase that falls from above, collapses, gets up, and then is immediately hit on the head with an entire little boy who falls from above. That's ZAZ-level hilarious, but proves to be an anomaly—apart from its adult-actor-as-child gimmick, Clifford is largely indistinguishable from something like Problem Child in content and from Flaherty's other bland comedies (I saw both 18 Again! and Who's Harry Crumb?, back in the days when "It's a movie" was plenty good enough for me) in sensibility. Despite being a Martin Short fan going all the way back to 1982, when I'd sneak out of bed at 12:30am to watch SCTV at low volume while the rest of my family slept, I was not enticed by the prospect of watching him play an obnoxious 10-year-old, and he did not disappoint, which is to say that he did; there's no character here to speak of, just an embodiment of fussy hyperactivity that pales beside that of Ed Grimley (though we do get a goofy Grimley-esque dance). This movie even manages to squander the practically unsquanderable Dabney Coleman. Critics who called it terrible at the time were well within their rights. I'm not particularly inclined to defend it. 

But Charles Grodin is on fire. 

Almost literally, at one point, when Clifford tricks Uncle Martin into drinking tabasco sauce—an indifferently constructed bit that Grodin makes work entirely via strangled pantomime. Mostly, though, it's a matter of watching him grow increasingly manic over the course of the movie, eventually crossing the line into actual "child" abuse (which is easy to embrace, since the victim is in fact a middle-aged man being so deliberately annoying that you're eager to see him suffer). Grodin doesn't modulate this as well as he might have, needlessly shouting some of his lines even before Clifford shows up; I actually made a note to that effect, early on, planning to point out that he's much funnier when more characteristically restrained, as when Martin can't stop himself from checking to see whether his boss is wearing a toupee. When Martin truly snaps, however, it's something to behold. Clifford's most memorable scene not only appears to have been improvised, but for all the world comes across as Grodin speaking directly to Short, rather than Uncle Martin speaking to Clifford: "If you even look at me funny, if you do one thing that I find weird, which is, y'know, like, your middle name...see, now, you're doing it right now. Can you just act like a human boy for one minute here? Look at me like a person! You can't do it for more than a few seco—LOOK AT ME LIKE A HUMAN BOY!" No way in hell that was scripted, and thank god Flaherty shot it in singles because I can't imagine that Short didn't fall out of his oversized prop chair. Clifford never again reaches that demented height, but Grodin's sheer furious intensity keeps the film watchable, which is pretty remarkable considering how little he or anyone else involved has been given to work with. The man really was a genius of sorts—as I noted upon his death, the episode of Saturday Night Live he hosted might be that show's single greatest, 100% due to his own inspired conceit (in which he didn't attend rehearsals all week and never has a clue what's going on in any sketch)—and I'm glad to have been belatedly directed to this unexpected example. Just please don't tell me that I also have to sit through the first couple of Beethoven movies. 

Also, since I mostly slagged Flaherty (whose brother Joe is another SCTV favorite; sorry, Paul, your movies are all bad), one other small word of praise: That Dinosaur World rollercoaster is an impressive piece of effects work. You can tell that they neither built an entire ride from scratch nor used an existing one, yet it "plays" as a credible amusement-park attraction, to the point where it feels like you could map out the track and scenery if you had a mind to. That's some solid modest-budget ingenuity. 

* [who?] indeed.