Flawed but wholesome ‘Cybermutt’ saves day

Rex, the bionic retriever who is the hero of the family-oriented action-comedy movie “Cybermutt” (5 p.m., Animal Planet), is meant to amaze, but he is undone when it counts by the filmmakers’ stupid human tricks.

Or a challenging stunt budget, anyway.

The wonder dog runs faster than 60 mph -- or so we are told by one of the characters in the film. Since Rex is shown almost exclusively in slow motion whenever he runs, it’s hard to tell.

Other action scenes jump from Point A to Point C to gawking reactions, leaving the viewer to wonder what, if anything, just happened.

“Cybermutt” was directed by George Miller (the one who made animal-themed movies like “Andre” and “Zeus and Roxanne,” not the man behind the “Mad Max” movies) and written by Gerald Sanford and Kevin Commins. It’s reminiscent of “Beethoven,” “Home Alone” and “The Six Million Dollar Man” in its broad story line.

Rex is apparently killed while saving the life of Alex (Judd Nelson), an earnest scientist and former dot-com gazillionaire working on a hush-hush bionic project.

“Bionics is much more than a ‘70s camp television show. It has the potential to help people walk again, see again, hear again,” he explains in one of the movie’s more amusing lines.

The grateful Alex alters his experiment, using the technology to bring Rex back to life, much to the delight of his owner, a boy named Nino (Ryan Cooley). Alex secretly installs in Rex a theta chip that has numerous killer applications. In addition to being able to “talk to every chip on the planet,” it turns Rex into a bionic canine with extraordinary powers.

Naturally, a pair of fiendish but bumbling techno-crooks lusts after the chip, doing the dognapper thing.

Despite its flaws, “Cybermutt” is wholesome and harmless enough. After all, it’s pretty obvious that no animals were harmed during the filming of this motion picture.