cloddish

Though Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for The New York Times that the “direction is uncomfortably cloddish and slow,” he noted that “subtle backlash of burlesque banter not only tags the brand of wit that flows with old-fashioned charm through the picture, but pointedly explains the buoyancy and survival of the young ladies in this bumptious film.”

“Topol … plays the seemingly cloddish patriarch, Sallah, as an adept, natural and, occasionally, comic clown. He is properly obsequious, dumb and, basically wily — a man who, it turns out, may not be equipped professionally but is wise enough to try every trick in the book to preserve himself and his brood,” film critic A.H.

A cloddish barbarian in the presiding officer’s chair.

There’s the cloddish desperation of the strategy, summed up by its designer.

They saw themselves as an “axis of adults,” Bolton writes disdainfully, who would steer Trump away from his cloddish foreign policy instincts and campaign promises.