The new picture is a remake of the original 1974 “Benji,” with a few variations. It changes the location from a Texas town to New Orleans. The single parent who won’t let the brother and sister adopt the homeless dog is here a mom rather than a dad. The quaint diner that figured in the 1974 story line is now a quaint pawnshop. The kids, the brother and sister Carter and Frankie (played by Gabriel Bateman and Darby Camp, who is no relation to the director), are updated with 21st century savvy.

Plotting to keep the dog without telling Mom, they consider logistics. “Where is he gonna pee and poop?” Frankie asks. “In your bed,” Carter says, smirking; although he’s bullied at school, he feels free to sass his sister. The kids then contemplate naming the pooch. “What about Benji?” Carter says. The dog perks up. “He looks like a Benji,” the boy continues. “Old and new at the same time.”

Continuing to reprise the original, the kids are kidnapped by thieves (a plot element perhaps inspired by the 1965 Disney picture “That Darn Cat”). Benji pursues the abducted children with great vigor. In the immortal words of Chico Marx, “he’s some smart dog.” Benji also manages to open a door with a skeleton key and execute the time-honored gag of jumping on a garbage pail, then onto a Dumpster top, then to a fire-escape ladder, with great aplomb. The movie brims with walk-and-bark shots that show Benji wandering city streets and country roads and just being supercute. For the movie’s climax, he teams up with a scruffier beast to rescue the kids, and the siblings actually persuade a Doberman to abandon the Dark Side and to embrace the Force, whatever that is in dog consciousness.

As cute animal movies go, “Benji” is adult-watchable, and most likely child catnip. The kidnappers are not pleasant, but the level of child trauma experienced by their victims doesn’t come within swinging distance of what you get on a random episode of “Stranger Things.” The soundtrack not only features boomer-hip music selections like Cat Stevens’s “I Love My Dog” and John Hiatt’s “Have a Little Faith in Me,” but Charlie Rich’s original “Benji” theme, titled “I Feel Love.” (Not the Donna Summer song. Knock it off, wiseguy.)

THE RECENT announcement by the streaming site FilmStruck that it would be bringing immortal Hollywood classics like “Casablanca” and “Citizen Kane” to its service elicited much rejoicing on social media and websites, but it did not take long for some to point out the cloud obscuring the silver lining. The migration of hundreds of titles (over a period of time, not all at once) to FilmStruck is part of the shutdown of the Warner Archive streaming site, which will happen on April 26. (FilmStruck will continue to honor existing Warner Archive subscriptions.)