Roger Ebert gave the film a half-star of a possible four. He wrote: "The movie is so odd, it's almost worth seeing just because we'll never see anything like it again. I hope." He and his colleague Gene Siskel gave Clifford "Two thumbs down" on their television show At the Movies, with particular criticism towards Martin Short's casting; Siskel likened him to "a wizened little dwarf". Desson Thomson for The Washington Post praised Grodin but said everything else was "an awful piece of business"; Variety called it "gimmicky" and "poorly conceived".
