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.

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.

The years have not been kind to The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. The plot and the tech in this movie are laughable, and not in a good way. I remember liking this movie back in the day, but I should have left it in the past where it belongs.