L'ordinateur en folie

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.

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.

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.

I remember seeing this as a kid in the theatre, and saw it again for the first time in many years on cable recently. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it after all this time. Russell's performance is quite believable, despite the fantastic story line. Really good entertainment, and blows away much of the modern Disney entertainment provided these days, which is pretty nauseating.

Though highly successful at the time, I'm not sure the Kurt Russell trilogy starting with The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes has stood the test of time very well. It'll be hard to get kids to understand a movie that features a computer the size of an entire room. In an underfunded college, it's a huge achievement for them to get one computer donated to the campus. In a freak accident, Kurt gets electrocuted and melds his mind with the computer chip. He's a walking encyclopedia!

But, kids today won't understand how amazing his superpower is. They just whip out their cell phones and Google their questions, finding answers in seconds. They've probably never read an actual encyclopedia in their lives, relying on Wikipedia instead. If you're able to explain it to them, this might be a cute choice for family movie night. It's a classic Disney movie with no real danger anywhere, but with a pseudo-menacing bad guy (Cesar Romero) who wants money and power and chases after the good guy. There are terrible 1960s haircuts, music that will make you roll your eyes, and an extremely silly paint fight.

Before you feel sorry for big-time actors like Cesar Romero, David Niven, and Fred MacMurray who played in silly Disney movies when they grew older, keep this in mind: Many silver screen actors were disgusted by the inappropriate films after the demise of the Hays Code. Disney movies with banana peels and pies in the face reminded them of the good old days of the 1930s. They were probably very happy to make them!