Surviving Gilligan's Island (2001)

I have to admit this is the first movie to make me cry in many years. The final few minutes of the film was very powerful, especially when Jim Backus played his last scene.I remember this program when it originally aired back in 1964. It was fun seeing the behind the camera action of these 7 actors who were stuck on that desert island in the vast Pacific.I highly recommend this film to fans of the old show. It was great to see Bob Denver (Gilligan), Dawn Welles (Maryann) and Russell Johnson (the Professor) together after so many years. I think the bittersweet emotions they were experiencing was passed on to the audience.We all have gotten older but the castaways are still together and trying to find away back to civilization. I hope they are forever on that island.

This documentary movie hosted by Dawn Wells, Bob Denver and Russel Johnson was incredibly well done!The actors that re-enacted the roles of the castaways were superb, the young man who portrayed Jim Backus had a hell of a task on his hands and performed pretty well.The actor who Portrayed Alan Hale had his character down to a Science. Tina Louis was portrayed most accurately.If you pay close attention to this movie it explains why Tina never comes to the reunions, she wanted nothing to do with this show after it was over, she demanded extra high pay to play Ginger in the Rescue from Gilligan's Island so Schwartz told her where to go and he got another actress, this is not mentioned in the film.The fact that Tina Louis was tricked into doing this show by her agent is a good enough explaination and is fully explained here.No one is portrayed as a saint in this film, whoever made that comment was totally wrong!This film follows up the E! True Hollywood Story Nicely and by the way Tina Louis allowed herself to be interviewed by E! for that documentary.I give this 4 stars for excellent acting and accuracy! Worth checking out if it is shown again.

Well this was one of the stranger things I have seen, a psueo-'Behind the Show' type Bio on the Gilligan's cast, with the three surviving ones both narrating and occ. playing themselves. Intercut are re-enactments of the show, off-camera stuff and whatever, with these eerie scenes of Dawn Wells walking right into a scene and talking to 'herself'(played by someone else) in Wardrobe. Strange.I enjoyed the tributes/portrayals of Alan Hale Jr., Backus and Schaefer the best. It was fun, esp. as the actors were all familiar TV faces. How much of this rings true, well, it's up to the viewer. No mention of Bob Denver's bust of late, or for that matter of how goofy the whole enterprise was-it's nostalgia, pure and simple.I didn't like the one sided slant on Tina Louise, by the way, comes off as prima donna #1, all insulted by being on the show and all that. From what I can tell, it's more 'she doesn't do any reunions or anything with us so we will slag her for it', which isn't exactly fair. She was right, being on the show meant their careers were toast afterwards. Why should she wanna relive what amounted to career suicide?Typecasting, the old demon of TV.Overall, though, it was a good watch, not something you see everyday.**1/2 outta **** stars.

This is delightful!Dawn Wells,Bob Denver,and Russel Johnson present a light-hearted look back at the making of this timeless tv show and it's enduring spots in hearts of folks all over the world.Actors recreate the early battles to get te green-light from the network to make this show.Unbelievable that this well-loved show had such a hard time getting on tv!