Very Cool!!!

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Absolutely the worst movie.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Having had great success with their campus kook comedies "The Misadventures of Merlin Jones" and "The Monkey's Uncle" in the mid-1960s, Disney couldn't pass up the opportunity to continue their formula, now with Kurt Russell's Dexter Riley replacing Tommy Kirk's Merlin Jones. Small town college, eager to keep up with the times, accepts the donation of a (very large) computer from the local big shot--who then forfeits his usual $20,000 annual gift to the school, telegraphing us that he's a rat. Goof-off student Dexter is electrocuted after touching the computer wires with his sneakers in a puddle, thus giving him a computerized brain. Since Dexter isn't really a medical marvel--just the victim of an unusual circumstance--his winning at gambling and against other universities in a College of Knowledge face-off doesn't seem fair. Mathematicians test Dexter's brain and are amazed, while the dean of the school smiles like a shark on the sidelines--everyone is either corrupt or being duped. Family film is poorly made and in gloppy color, but kids in 1969 didn't notice or care. Russell returned as Dexter in 1972's "Now You See Him, Now You Don't" and in 1975's "The Strongest Man in the World". *1/2 from ****

The Kurt Russell era at Disney Studios started with The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes which is a misleading title. Because when Russell gets shocked and the computer knowledge and memory retention is programmed into him, he's not wearing tennis shoes. In fact if he had he would not have been grounded and would have gotten the electric shock.Although Kurt had appeared in several Disney features with this one he started starring in them on a regular basis and eventually quite properly worried that he would be fatally typecast in Dexter Riley type parts. Fortunately for his career he wasn't.But for about 8 years or so after this film he was Disney's all American kid lead in a lot of teen comedies. Seeing Kurt and his fellow students at Medfield College you would hardly know there was anything like a counterculture war going on with kids doing things like tuning in, turning on, and dropping out, to dodging the draft, to protesting at the Pentagon.Here the kids are doing nothing more than trying to aid their favorite professor William Schallert from hidebound Dean Joe Flynn. But after the computer comes and it's a large machine and Russell gets shocked from it, everybody wants a piece of him with his retentive memory. Including the guy who owned the computer gangster Cesar Romero. He forgot to erase the files of his business and when Russell starts blurting out his private information on a college bowl show on television, Romero decides he's got to be eliminated.I won't say more other than Russell finds out who is friends really are. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (who really didn't) is an innocuous and quaint Disney film. I think the younger generation who now own their own or have access to same in schools and libraries will get a laugh out of Joe Flynn's reluctance to enter the modern age and the monstrosity of a machine he bought.

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.

This is just another one of those naive half-baked 60s movies that's not even good enough to show its face in a movie theater. The plot seemed really interesting, you know, a kid getting a computer into his head, if only the movie were as good! Uggh, it's just horrible. Life's time on earth is too precious to waste, and watching this movie would be an excellent way to waste it. It's like repeating the same scenes over and over and over and over again with different lines. I actually fell asleep during it. This was actually on Netflix, and the extremely corny movies are NEVER listed on there. I really can't believe they listed this. Please don't see it, take my word for it.