The very generic sounding Medford College was the location for a few silly Disney comedy's starring Kurt Russell prior to his action star fame, and while they appealed to me as a child and even in early adult hood, now they are obvious and beyond total adult enjoyment. But what a cast it includes, as silly as these veterans get to be, they are names from the past that are a "Who's Who" of favorites. Phil Silvers, Eve Arden, Cesar Romero, Joe Flynn, Harold Gould, Kathleen Freeman, Mary Treen, and that's just some of them.
The story surrounds a magical serial pumped with scientific formula accidentally spilled in Medford's laboratory that make a wimpy pup chase a Doberman down a crowded street, turn the nerdy dean into a weight lifter who can crack a conference room table and lift up a chair with Ms. Arden sitting down, all with one hand. I couldn't help but giggle at this sight of Joe Flynn performing this deed even as I rolled my eyes. When Kurt Russell takes it, he is set to be the star athlete at a competition between Arden's cereal company and that of her rival's, played to snarky perfection by Phil Silvers. Cesar Romero and Richard Bakalyan are the two "reformed" prisoners hired by Silvers to steal the formula.
Let's see, considering that this is a Disney movie, where do you think it will go from there? If you said into even more silliness, then you are right. I don't think today's cynical kids, already jaded with technology and special effects can appreciate the brilliance of early similar Disney classics such as "The Absent Minded Professor" and "The Shaggy Dog" let alone this one. But we can try, right? O.K., so a few savy ones might recognize Arden from "Grease" or Silvers as Sgt. Bilko, but for us adults who remember Russell from an early appearance in an Elvis Presley movie (before playing Elvis himself) and his single appearance as a jungle boy on "Gilligan's Island", it is a far cry from his much later action movie days which took his career into an entirely different direction.
For me, the attraction was seeing these scene-stealing comic stars, and I'm sure many of them wanted to be in something that their grandchildren could watch. In an era when Disney was going for films they could later show on their Sunday night T.V. series (producing such slap-dash fare as "Gus" and "Superdad" in addition to classics like "Escape From Witch Mountain" and "Freaky Friday"), these films do seem somewhat rushed, tossed around with overly silly scripts and veteran stars mixed with younger actors like Russell and Jodie Foster. For what they are, they are certainly "cute" but "memorable" they are not, especially when compared to much of their earlier big screen fare.
The story surrounds a magical serial pumped with scientific formula accidentally spilled in Medford's laboratory that make a wimpy pup chase a Doberman down a crowded street, turn the nerdy dean into a weight lifter who can crack a conference room table and lift up a chair with Ms. Arden sitting down, all with one hand. I couldn't help but giggle at this sight of Joe Flynn performing this deed even as I rolled my eyes. When Kurt Russell takes it, he is set to be the star athlete at a competition between Arden's cereal company and that of her rival's, played to snarky perfection by Phil Silvers. Cesar Romero and Richard Bakalyan are the two "reformed" prisoners hired by Silvers to steal the formula.
Let's see, considering that this is a Disney movie, where do you think it will go from there? If you said into even more silliness, then you are right. I don't think today's cynical kids, already jaded with technology and special effects can appreciate the brilliance of early similar Disney classics such as "The Absent Minded Professor" and "The Shaggy Dog" let alone this one. But we can try, right? O.K., so a few savy ones might recognize Arden from "Grease" or Silvers as Sgt. Bilko, but for us adults who remember Russell from an early appearance in an Elvis Presley movie (before playing Elvis himself) and his single appearance as a jungle boy on "Gilligan's Island", it is a far cry from his much later action movie days which took his career into an entirely different direction.
For me, the attraction was seeing these scene-stealing comic stars, and I'm sure many of them wanted to be in something that their grandchildren could watch. In an era when Disney was going for films they could later show on their Sunday night T.V. series (producing such slap-dash fare as "Gus" and "Superdad" in addition to classics like "Escape From Witch Mountain" and "Freaky Friday"), these films do seem somewhat rushed, tossed around with overly silly scripts and veteran stars mixed with younger actors like Russell and Jodie Foster. For what they are, they are certainly "cute" but "memorable" they are not, especially when compared to much of their earlier big screen fare.