Beethoven (KTTV Monday at 8 p.m.) is...

Beethoven (KTTV Monday at 8 p.m.) is a medium-level comedy about a lovable Saint Bernard, a dog-loving family and a dog-phobic dad. It’s a consciously naive movie--big, bright, cartoonish--but there’s some feeling in it. Written by Edmond Dantes and Amy Holden Jones and directed by Brian Levant, the movie is about the way pets humanize uptight suburbanites, who don’t get any more uptight than George Newton, played by Charles Grodin. His humanizer is Beethoven himself: a big, sloppy dog (played by canine star Chris, a dozen doubles and a score of adorable puppies) who leaves muddy footprints everywhere. In a sly casting stroke, Dean Jones, who might have played George himself a couple of decades back, portrays the evil veterinarian Dr. Varnick, from whom Beethoven escapes.

Serpico (KTTV Tuesday at 1:30 a.m.) is that excellent 1973 Sidney Lumet-directed true-life account of a courageous New York City cop who risked his life to expose widespread corruption within his department. The title role confirmed stardom for Al Pacino, who lets us watch a man undergoing changes--from the innocent and idealistic but not really naive rookie to the embittered, embattled loner whose sin is that he refused to take his cut of the precinct’s monthly collections.

The 1990 Home Alone (NBC Thursday at 8 p.m.) makes one wonder how closely a movie can resemble a cartoon and still be called a movie; it’s like “Straw Dogs” redone by the Three Stooges. Macauley Culkin became famous overnight as the 8-year-old accidentally left behind by his vacationing family and therefore forced to fend for himself against a pair of bumbling burglars (Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern).

On the late, late show: Peter Bogdanovich’s 1973 Paper Moon (KTTV Friday at 1:30 a.m.), a delightful Depression-era comedy in which con man Ryan O’Neal latches on to a smart-alecky--and Oscar-winning Tatum O’Neal.

Without the stunningly whimsical turtle suits supplied by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (KTTV Friday at 8 p.m.), like its predecessor, might just look like it sounds, which is pretty tacky. It takes up where the original left off, reintroducing us to Michaelangelo (the orange headband), Raphael (the red), Leonardo (the blue) and Donatello (the purple--or is it the blue?) and their rat mentor, Splinter. With villains apparently in short supply, the movie resuscitates the monster-mobster of the previous movie, the infamous Shredder.