‘Re-Animated’ pokes fun

The original TV movie “Re-Animated” (8 p.m., Cartoon Network) offers a hyperactive combination of animation and real action, and a plot that sends up the history and legends of the cartoon industry.

Jimmy (Dominic Janes) is your average seventh-grader with an unusual family. His father gobbles sugary cereals, watches cartoons and has the attention span of a Labrador retriever.

He’s also the vice principal of Jimmy’s school.

Jimmy’s mom is an astronaut, always on her way to and from deep space.

And his adopted sister is a green alien with antennae and special powers.

“Re-Animated” really gets interesting when Jimmy’s seventh-grade class goes on a field trip to a cartoon theme park. After Jimmy is struck by a miniature locomotive, he is saved by an emergency brain transplant performed by a team of surgeons dressed as cartoon characters.

Luckily for Jimmy, the folks at Golly World have kept the frozen brain of the company’s dead founder, Milt Appleday (portrayed by Fred Willard in animatronic form) on ice for 30 years. With Appleday’s brain implanted in his head, Jimmy can suddenly “see” and converse with all of the vintage cartoon characters. And they seem eager to be seen, having saved up their conversation since 1977.

Burl Ives narrates the 1964 favorite “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (8 p.m., CBS). It was interesting last week to listen to all of the paranoid cable talk-show blather about the “hidden agenda” of “Happy Feet,” the new cartoon hit. Don’t all cartoons reflect the concerns and philosophies of their times and their creators?

Other highlights

Jimmy Durante narrates the 1969 cartoon “Frosty the Snowman” (9 p.m., CBS).

A blackballed mobster (Vincent Pastore, “The Sopranos”) wants to hold his daughter’s wedding at the casino on “Las Vegas” (9 p.m., NBC). Wayne Newton guest-stars.

Scheduled on “Primetime” (9 p.m., ABC): North Korea.

A random shooting may be anything but on “Numb3rs” (10 p.m., CBS).

A wiretapper’s fatal trip on “Law & Order” (10 p.m., NBC).