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| "Court jesters" is funnier than any joke in the actual program. |
NBC
May 15, 1981
TV-Movie
VHS
C
Yes, I'm giving this the same grade as I gave the first reunion. (As I said, I'm missing the middle movie, but briefly, they all get rescued for good and then the Howells open a resort with guests like Tom Bosley and Marcia Wallace.) Let me just list the people involved before I try to unpack this:
- The entire original cast, except of course Tina Louise, and with Backus's role reduced due to illness;
- Yet another Ginger, 30-year-old Constance Forslund (note, since the Professor claims they've been on the island 18 years, this would make her 12 at the time of shipwreck, or really well preserved here)
- 32-year-old David Ruprecht as the previously very much never mentioned (in fact his existence contradicted by an episode or two) Thurston Howell IV, and it's one of the better performances;
- Yes, the Harlem Globetrotters, whose plane goes down, but they wash up ashore on the island, and I guess they're playing themselves, like they did in their cartoon and other places;
- Scatman Crothers as their coach and pilot, and accompanist (it is cool to hear him do "Sweet Georgia Brown")
- Since this isn't enough plot, we get villains played by then husband-and-wife Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, as respectively a wealthy man intent on cornering the market on a mysterious ingredient called Supremium, and a blonde live-action version of Natasha Fatale;
- Not technically people, but their comic relief sidekick robot George, and a team of basketball-playing robots
- Bob Denver's wife Dreama as the Southern belle receptionist for the Howells (actually given more to do than Wells);
- 23-year-old Rosalind Chao, around the time she started teaching Arnold Jackson but before she married Klinger, as the Hotel Clerk;
- Sportscasters Stu Nahan and Chick Hearn (the latter played Announcers on Gilligan's Island) as, well, sportscasters;
- Not only the Schwartz Bunch (Sherwood and his brothers Al and Elroy) but Brady and Gilligan writer David P. Harmon, and Schwartzian newbie Gordon Mitchell (who did however write for a lot of other sitcoms, including Mork & Mindy;
- and Peter Baldwin, who directed The Brady Girls Get Married and some episodes of Bunch, but not any previous rendition of GI.
Now, I noted with BGGM that it was playing to the fans, so the cheesiness and all could be forgiven. But this doesn't really have any of the feel of the original show. Yes, it's slapsticky but GI was never just about slapstick. Rescue allowed for some sentimental moments, but here hardly any of the original cast interact with each other, beyond the Skipper and Gilligan. And when they do, it's not terribly interesting. It's in fact Space 1999's Landau and Bain who have chemistry and cheese. This reunion does have more fanservice than previously, in the sense that Wells and Forslund do an aerobics routine and there are scantily clad guests that the Skipper flirts with, although they're about one-third his age. I would say as I did of Rescue that this is only for completists, and it is after all the last time that the three oldest cast members would act together. This is by no means the end of Gilligan's Island though, thanks to, for instance, ALF.Whitney Rydbeck, who does the voice of George the Robot, was a Page on The Brady Bunch and Sgt. Hondo McKee on M*A*S*H. Wendy Hoffman, who was Sheri, on Mork & Mindy, plays Jackie, one of the bikini-wearing guests. This program finally allows Dawn Wells to reach her 100th TV show in my collection, the rest of the castaways (except Tina Louise) already having passed this milestone.
