Eleven years after the modest sitcom Gilligan's Island left the air, the television movie Rescue from Gilligan's Island was broadcast. It is not a great movie. The jokes are largely lame and the physical comedy annoys. Tellingly, Tina Louise, who played Ginger Grant on Gilligan, did not participate. Her replacement for Rescue gives us reason to suspect that Louise was a master thespian.
Yet Rescue still astonishes. There is a moment of catharsis about 40 minutes into the film when the castaways reach Honolulu and step off their raft built of co-joined huts. The viewer realizes that he has been waiting his whole life to see this moment, and it satisfies.
Each castaway returns to his or her previous life and, via a clever plot device, Gilligan and the Skipper pay each of them a visit. The viewer watches in amazement as the Gilligan characters go about life on land like anyone else. They work jobs and they have friends. No one mentions coconut cream pie. The viewer wants it to go on forever.
Buy at all costs.
2 comments:
Was that the one featuring the Harlem Globetrotters (tm) (of the Meadowlark Lemon era)? Or am I thinking of Return to Gilligan's Island? Or was that The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island?
New Ginger isn't as hot as Old Ginger. It ruined the movie for me.
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