The amusing premise of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes is that of a college non-student who, via an electrical accident, becomes brilliant because a computer memory bank has been transferred into his brain. Good looking production is above average family entertainment, enhanced to great measure by zesty, but never show-off, direction by Robert Butler, in a debut swing to pix from telefilm.
Surrounding Kurt Russell, playing the suddenly-smart student, is a most adroitly selected group of superior character actors. Joe Flynn as the college dean; William Schallert as Russell’s prof; Alan Hewitt, dean of a competing college who goes after Russell with a recruiting vengence when the kid’s fame spreads to a TV show hosted by Pat Harrington.
Also, Cesar Romero, with assistant Richard Bakalyan, provide the major story support: supposedly honest Romero, in reality a computer-oriented crime boss, has given Russell’s school his old computer. And in the accident to the youth, Romero’s clandestine records are inadvertently revealed.
