SHOWS FOR YOUNGSTERS AND THEIR PARENTS TOO : Learning from ‘Dad, the Angel & Me’--and don’t forget the orangutan

Despite its magical title, Dad, the Angel & Me doesn’t rely heavily on spirituality. The movie produced for the Family Channel uses earthly family dynamics to tell its story.

The comedy-drama, starring Judge Reinhold (as Dad), Carol Kane (as the angel) and Stephi Lineberg (as “me”), tells the story of a divorced father dad whose 10-year-old daughter comes to live with him after his ex-wife dies. Appearances by the angelic Kane guide the young girl during her adjustment.

Reinhold’s Dr. Fielder fits the mold of a pop psychologist who should --but doesn’t--heed the adage of “physician heal thyself.” His egocentric behavior ends up alienating his daughter.

As the film progresses, “The father learns to connect to his daughter, who he only knows from summer vacations,” says “Dad” director Rick Wallace. The theme of the movie--shot on location in Los Angeles last summer--emphasizes the destructiveness of self-obsession and self-centeredness, Wallace says.

Reinhold, from his Los Angeles home, says: “The father is restored by his daughter--and that completely takes him by surprise. As a pop psychologist, he’s so quick to pathologize everyone else, and his own life is so superficial. It’s poignant the way he finally opens his heart to her.”

“Dad, the Angel & Me” airs Sunday at 7 p.m. on the Family Channel. For ages 5 and up.

Another Family Show

Fans of Clint Eastwood’s “Every Which Way but Loose” know that orangutans are bright, obedient pets--at least in movies and TV. But not everybody knows that their media-generated popularity has endangered their existence.

Since 1980, a hit Taiwanese television show presented an orangutan as the perfect pet, setting off a demand for them in pet stores. That created enormous amounts of smuggling of the orangutans from Borneo and Sumatra, their native lands. The orangutans are still hunted for food and tribal ceremonies there, thereby diminishing their population further. The result: It’s estimated that orangutans may be extinct in three decades.

This week’s ABC World of Discovery offers up “Orangutans: Children of the Forest” (Saturday 8 p.m.), charting the plight of the orangutan through an extraordinary relationship between a woman and the simian she treated like another child.

“It’s a one-in-a-million story,” points out British documentary filmmaker Sarah Cunliffe, who had made another film on orangutans six years ago before being asked to find a new story.

Cunliffe knows first-hand why humans clamor for an orangutan in their home; up to 1,000--at a cost of $2,000 to 5,000 each--ended up in Taiwan.

“When I went to visit Mrs. Chang and Di-Di, I was greeted by this little hairy person, dressed like a little girl,” she says. Cunliffe says that Di-Di, a gift for Mrs. Chang’s son and now 7 years old, responded to Mrs. Chang’s commands to go to the bathroom, flush the toilet, drink tea, blow on the tea to cool it and wash her hands. Di-Di could respond to more than 500 commands, she says. Mrs. Chang not only dressed Di-Di like her child, but bathed her and even quit her job to take care of the pet.

But what many prospective owners don’t consider is that orangutans, who have a 50-year life span, get stronger and increasingly difficult as they get older. Many, Cunliffe says, are abandoned and probably killed--another reason for the animals’ decline.

Although trading was been banned in 1984, orangutans remain endangered. Fresh skulls, elaborately engraved, can be found in some Taiwanese tourist shops. A group was formed in Taiwan to register existing pets and work toward releasing some back into the Southeast Asian jungle, which is what Mrs. Chang did, with many tears.

Eventually, Di-Di was trained and then released into the jungle. At last monitoring, Di-Di was doing well. For ages 6 and up.