This patronizing TV movie scrapes the bottom of the barrel even by made-for-TV standards. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for movies about bionic dogs. But they'd better be fun. This one isn't fun at all. It's wall-to-wall logical lapses, the least of which is the title, calling what appears to be a purebred golden retriever a mutt. Try these on: a needle punctures a plastic bag, and it doesn't leak; a guy figures a kid's wrist is broken, even though he can twist it all around without much pain; a knife makes a shearing sound even though there is nothing for it to shear against; a dog is run over by a speeding car...on barely more than a hiking trail in the middle of the woods.

Stuff like that would matter less if the core material was solid, but nothing could be further from the truth. There isn't one single scene where the dialogue seems to fit. Take, for example, the scene where a woman who has lost her husband gets mad at a scientist because he was engrossed in his work during the time he became engaged to someone who was conning him out of his work. Or something like that. The synopsis doesn't even make sense, and the full scene isn't any clearer. My question is, why are we even having so many scenes like this anyway? There are gobs of them and too few of the dog using his bionic powers. Those are tainted with incompetent direction, too. The dog running at super fast speeds, for example, is inexplicably represented by slow motion.

Even dog lovers should skip this condescending hack tripe.