The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

I went to see this movie when I was ten years old and I loved it. Looking back and watching again as a 60-year old brings back good memories. In a world in flux this was a fun and cool little respite. It was the burgeoning day of the teen heartthrob and Disney wisely chose Kurt Russell. Russell was nigh on perfect as the "near-do-well" college student who suddenly becomes a national intellectual savant. Surrounded by a fine looking group of actors and actress it was kind of a warm hearted look later popularized as it is better to look good than to....well, you get it. As a ten year old I wanted to dress and be cool like these kids.

The story is fun too. Thrust into a spotlight with an encyclopedic all-encompassing computer like knowledge Russell played the role of Dexter making him a kind of photogenic celluloid teen idol right up there with rock stars. OK, the whole thing is rather stupid, but it's what I'd call "stupid good fun". Emminently watchable in spite of everything - and it was a big hit at the time.

Granted today the sophistication of youth and the ubiquitous nature of tech makes this flick quite dated. Even so, as a kind of time capsule of a time I give the film high marks. It was the perfect career turn for child actor Kurt Russell too. His staying power and consequent career speak for itself of course with this movie as a turning point. Disney would mine him for a while of course, but it was in the seventies he fully emerged as a leading man in an assortment of roles to which this film certainly was a springboard. In closing I love the fact that movies could be so simplistic and yet so much fun. A great time capsule of an era gone.

1960s Disney ends with a good, just not exceptional, film. It has been a long, up and down decade from the studio, with most falling under that category or lower.

'The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes' entertains to a satisfactory degree, with Kurt Russell leading brightly as Dexter. The rest of the cast aren't all that remarkable, even if there are a load of faces I recognise from other things. If I had to choose the most noteworthy, they would be Cesar Romero (Arno) & William Schallert (Quigley).

The plot is enjoyable, it's just as bonkers as you'd expect given it's in a similar vein to films like 1961's 'The Absent-Minded Professor'. I'd say it's better executed than that Flubber premise. There's also a cool chase sequence in this, too.

I'm curious to see where the sequels head.

When compared with modern movies, yes, it *does* fall short. However, it must be viewed with the genre and era it was made in. It's simply another of those "60's feel good movies" types. In a time when the country was in a turmoil and college campuses were a hotbed of controversy, this movie (and it's 2 sequels) chose to portray the college scene somewhat rosier than reality. So what? Disney did that a lot with his movies.Disney movie versions of many classic stories always were white-washed,sanitized versions of themselves. Remember the Jungle Book? It was a far cry from the original Kipling tale. This came out at, or near the time of the "Kent State" mess. Dates about it vary from placing it in 1969 or 1970. Whenever it actually played, it came at the end of a very turbulent time in America's history. I feel that audiences were looking forward to seeing a nice, quiet view of college life, however naive.

People who are putting down this film as not good enough to 'show it's face in the theater' are showing their extreme ignorance.

These movies were made for family audiences and rebroadcast on Walt Disney's television program which highlighted family oriented movies with cast members that even signed morals clauses that they wouldn't act up (see Lindsey Lohan, etc. in these days) and trash the Disney image as being a family movie business.

Early on Disney had just made shorts and TV shows. In the late fifties they started making full-length films like 'The Shaggy Dog' with Fred MacMurray. It was so successful, it started something. Fred MacMurray was asked to do more films.

The Absent-Minded Professor (remade later with Robin Williams in the lead role in 'Flubber') was one of the successful movies made by Disney that was then edited for their TV audience.

It not only spawned a sequel, "Son of Flubber", but many more family films and comedies that were designed to help people forget their problems, while at the same time the commercials advertised Disneyland.

Disney was ahead of his time in providing programming in what were essentially well-made advertisements for families to enjoy and be reminded about visiting Disneyland, his 'family fun park'.

This light-hearted, fun comedy featured Kurt Russell in the early days of computers (pre-internet)getting the computer's full knowledge into his head.

In the remake (with Kirk Cameron) they updated it to the Internet infiltrating the student's mind and a 'super-hacker' from the opposing school (who's dean ironically is past Disney star Dean Jones) who seeks to hack Cameron's brain and stop his 'brilliance'.

The first of the three films that revolve around Dexter Riley (Russell), the dean (Joe E. Flynn), and friends is also the best done, though the others are enjoyable too. ('Now You See Him, Now You Don't' and 'Strongest Man In the World' are part of this three movie series)

It also teaches the value of humility. Riley did nothing to gain his knowledge, yet he became proud of how smart he was. He had to learn humility and how to treat his friends if he wanted to keep them. Good lessons to learn.

The Disney television films were made for families and are much better than the stuff made today for 'families' including politically correct films, sexually explicit, nasty language and all the other things that supposedly makes them more 'modern'.

Disney TV temporarily stopped around 1975. They have made some films since then that were still family oriented, though people that followed Walt and then Roy Disney didn't have the same ideas about films and the value of good stories.

Enter the Michael Eisner era...remaking classics and making part 2 stories of classics that have no basis in classic books and WERE released direct to video or DVD. Even marginal animated hits got sequels made. Actual hits like Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, got several (part 2 of Aladdin was a real turkey).

Several of the older Disney films were remade for a 'revived' TV program. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes was one of the better attempts. I would say only a handful were watchable in their 'updated' form. They made kids have to act like adults while the adults act like kids (this might be a clever plot line in 'Freaky Friday', but when it enters into other stories, it's hard to make out who is supposed to be adult and who are kids.

No wonder kids today are forced to face problems beyond their years. They can't even escape it in the so-called 'escape films' on TV or in the movies these days (with rare exceptions).

It takes exceptions like Pirates of the Caribbean or The Chronicles of Narnia to remind Disney that people still like well-made escape films that are wholesome and uplifting for the whole family.

At Medfield College, an nonintellectual named Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) becomes brilliant over night. Following an electrical accident, he gains the abilities to remember any knowledge learned instantly and perfectly; all because a donated computer memory was transferred to his brain. After Riley gains fame and attention via television appearances, the dean of a competing university decides to go after him and ruin his reputation. At the same time A. J. Arno, a secretly technologically-based crime boss, with an upstanding public persona pursues the student and his school, as the computer he had donated - that is now integrated into Riley's - holds the records of his crime network.

Kurt Russell had appeared in Disney films since 1967, albeit in bit or supporting parts, but it wasn't until 1969 when the Studio still adjusting to the loss of their key creative force, Walt himself, had Russell headline a film. The result was The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes which is arguably the first of the "gimmick" comedies that would define the majority of output for 70s Disney, though foundations could be seen in the two Robert Stevenson films Blackbeard's Ghost and The Love Bug. The first Dexter Riley film unfortunately is beneath Kurt Russell's talents as it's basically a sitcom in feature film format.

From the staging, to the acting, to the plot that begins with a high concept and everything returning to the status quo established at the beginning of the movie, the movie has all the typical checkmarks seen in one of the may gimmicky sitcoms of the 60s from enduring classics like Bewtiched and I Dream of Jeanie to buried embarrassments like My Mother the Car. Russell as Dexter is more or less your typical hapless sitcom protagonist who stumbles into dilemma's let's ego or some other factor lead him astray then come back to the status quo through some grounded force, in this case his friends who for all intents and purposes are basically one singular character spread across 15 or 20 people.

There's a few chuckle worthy scenes sprinkled throughout the movie such as a scene where Dexter completes an entire exam booklet in a little under 5 minutes and then out of boredom starts squeaking his chair or eating lunch to the annoyance of the professor and other students. And I did get the odd chuckle from Joe Flynn and Alan Hewitt playing competing Deans trying to claim Dexter for their respective colleges. But not only are these points scattered thin throughout the movie, it only makes the movie feel more like a sitcom thanks to Flynn and Hewitt's association with them (McHale's Navy and My Favorite Martian). Even Cesar Romero as villain A. J. Arno is disappointing as he's basically playing a variation on the antagonist from Blackbeard's Ghost but without the Gravitas Robert Stevenson brought to that movie.

The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes is harmless, but also weightless and toothless. From it's "gee gosh" protagonist to a silly story that reverts to the status quo on tired contemporary sitcom cliches, it's a movie that seems like it wants to be forgotten.