If the sight of Jason Priestley playing air guitar to Judas Priest’s “Eat Me Alive” is your idea of a good time, then, by all means, don’t miss the over-the-top made-for-TV movie “Warning: Parental Advisory” (8 p.m., Sunday, VH1).

“Warning” recalls the political and media circus that surrounded the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), a self-appointed group of Washington wives and mothers. Founded by Tipper Gore (Mariel Hemingway) in 1985, the group chastised the music industry for selling songs about sex, violence, sado-masochism and the occult to unsuspecting parents and children.

Priestley plays Charlie Burner, a smug and cynical young Washington lobbyist for the recording industry. As the film begins, we see him trading favors to convince the Senate to pass a tax on blank cassettes that would recoup billions of dollars for record companies. (See, record industry greed didn’t begin with Napster!)

After Tipper’s movement scares away potential backers for his legislation, Charlie and his fellow lobbyists decide to strike a compromise with the PMRC. But with public sentiment on their side, the group uses its political clout to schedule Senate hearings and issue a list of songs (“The Filthy Fifteen”) that they want banned.

Charlie soon discovers that the fury of congressional wives is nothing compared to the passions of a dedicated musician. Frank Zappa (Griffin Dunne, in a memorable performance) arrives in Washington and lectures Charlie on the many attempts to censure rock music. Oddly, this film fails to mention the fact that as a young musician Zappa spent a night in a California jail for playing “obscene” music.

The scenes of Charlie Burner and Frank Zappa furtively meeting in parks and Charlie’s favorite record store make “Warning” seem like an odd hybrid of “JFK” and “High Fidelity.” After a few hours spent with the composer of “Hot Rats” and “Weasels Ripped My Flesh,” Charlie is transformed from a spineless lobbyist to a crusading defender of the First Amendment.

Of course, it always helps to have longhaired Twisted Sister singer Dee Snider on your side (he plays himself quite convincingly). Snider was the only musician listed on the “Filthy Fifteen” with the courage to face a Senate hearing. At the last minute, Charlie got soft-rocker John Denver (Tim Guinee) to testify as well. He had faced censorship in the early 1970s, when some stations banned “Rocky Mountain High” for having “pro-drug” lyrics.

Like many critics of the PMRC, “Warning” treats Gore and her cohorts as bored PTA types who dreamed up their movement while eating tea cookies and gossiping. Hemingway seems pained, awkward and two-dimensional as Tipper Gore. “Warning’s” cartoon-like and condescending portrait of concerned parents undercuts the movie’s anti-censorship message and underscores rock music’s enduring themes of male arrested development and crude misogyny. While “Warning” allows joke-rocker Dee Snider to revisit his day in the spotlight, an update at the film’s conclusion fails to even mention that Frank Zappa died in 1993.

Former “L.A. Law” co-stars Harry Hamlin and Susan Dey star in the 2002 drama “Disappearance” (7 p.m., Sunday, TBS) about an SUV-driving family who visits a mysterious off-the-map ghost town where strange things happen. This is a slow, dumb and pointless movie that goes nowhere fast, and stays there for an excruciating two hours.

Today’s highlights

A series of otherworldly monsters take on the neurotic canine during a six-hour marathon of “Courage the Cowardly Dog” (noon, Cartoon Network).

Elton John appears on a rerun of “Last Call With Carson Daly” (7 p.m., NBC).

Rosie O’Donnell hosts the sixth “Annual Kids Choice Awards” (7 p.m., Nickelodeon).

Alec Baldwin hosts “Saturday Night Live” (10:30 p.m., NBC).