There's no possible way to hate Clifford the Big Red Dog. Even a feature-length cartoon starring Clifford aimed at preschoolers is too sweet to dislike. It seems that Clifford (voiced by the late John Ritter) eats so much that it's driving his family to the poorhouse. He joins a circus in the hopes of winning a lifetime supply of dog food (it's complicated), but instead he unwittingly alienates the star of the animal acrobatics show--think of it as All About Eve but with a nice, building-size doggy.
In fact, Clifford's niceness trumps the film's hack-job animation (the kind suitable for cheapo, straight-to-video embarrassments like Lady and the Tramp 2) and sometimes-annoying voice cast (Cree Summer's cutesy poodle-speak is like claws on a chalkboard). This sweet-natured inoffensiveness should delight most four-year-olds and won't torture parents (much) in the process.