Very well executed

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I have a love/hate relationship with this show. First, I'll tell you the good. Then, I'll tell you the bad. This is the good:This show is a good sitcom, one of the best sitcoms ever made. It has an original premise, all seven characters are unique and complex. This is one of Sherwood Schwartz's gems. He also made The Brady Bunch, a tasteless garbage fire of a boring white bread family lovey-dovey comedy. He made this one first, and I don't know how he could make a good sitcom like this and then go make The Brady Bunch. This one is at least interesting. This one is cool, classic, timeless. It has a good aesthetic. I can't believe Sherwood Schwartz made both of them. This one has some real jokes. This one has conflict.It's family friendly. My favorite character is probably The Skipper. He's funny because he's fat. Everybody else is also OK. The concept is relatively original, sort of like a contemporary Robinsonade. This TV show is, uh, really good. It's from back when TV was original and fun. I can sit through this sitcom because it's wacky and every episode is different, but it feels real. The colors are vibrant.Now for the part that I hate. mainly, that it's based off Robinson Crusoe, which was written centuries before this show. Robinson Crusoe was written back when people still hadn't gotten to California. It was written before the age of radar, motors, GPS, or the like. Gilligan's island is set in the present day (and by that I mean the sixties), when finding seven people on an island would be very easy. Thus, the whole premise of the show is absurd and laughable, and is such a plothole that it prevents you from enjoying very much else.The first episode is the only really believable one. Gilligan and Skipper go out on a raft to try to find help, then give up and end up back on the island. That's the only one that feels as if it's set in the real world. If I was stuck on an island, the first thing I'd do would be maybe try to build a raft and get off the island. That first episode is the only time we see any characters on the water, or trying to get off the island in any sort of way. The first season is the only one that feels all that real. The last two seasons are fantasy. Multiple people get on the island- but they always get amnesia, or something, and never bother to tell the world that there are seven people on the island. It's a bizarre coincidence which I prefer to call a plot device. These seven people never get off the island. Why not?Do they want to stay there? I don't think they do. They all have lives apart from being on the island. so why don't they ever try getting off? This show, behind all the jokes, is depressing. I don't like watching people suffer. It's not enjoyable. Mr. Howell, in one episode, is revealed to have been rumored to be dead back on the mainland, but an impostor tries to impersonate him and says that Mrs. Howell died on the Minnow. That's Creepypasta level horror. How can seven people just vanish without being noticed? Gilligan might not be noticed- Skipper might not be noticed- Mary Ann might not be noticed- Professor would probably be noticed, considering he's a genius- Mr. Howell would be noticed, considering he's a billionaire, and Ginger would be noticed, since she's a movie star and everything. What sort of universe does this take place in? Seven people disappear, and everybody just thinks they died? Nobody searches for them, or anything? That's ridiculous. It's not even Mary Celeste level perplexing. they're on an island. It's a pretty big island, as far as I can tell- and random islands don't just happen. Most Pacific islands are known about. I mean, they had satellites and stuff back in the Sixties! And airplanes! They didn't have Google Maps, but they weren't barbarians!But society as a whole isn't entirely to blame for this tragedy. The castaways themselves are just as much to blame. At any time, they could lash together a few palm trees and make a crude sailing vessel- not as good as The Minnow, but just enough to take them back to the Mainland. They act completely helpless. Over the course of the show, they make all kinds of things that real castaways would never need- washing machines, bathtubs, huts that rival huts in Florida- I mean, they can do all that, but they can't make a boat? That's nuts. The island has plenty of vegetation that they could use to get off- but they never do. Are they stupid?Yes, to some extent. Skipper says that he's good at ocean navigation, but never tries to save them or get them off the island. Gilligan is irritating and immature. Mary Ann knows almost nothing. Ginger is vain. Mr. Howell is selfish and egotistical. Mrs. Howell is just as bad. The Professor is the only smart one out of the bunch, and even he doesn't realize that they could just make a raft, so I don't really have much sympathy for him, either. This is a show about idiots suffering. I don't like idiots, but I can't stand watching them suffer, either. Of course, they're not really suffering- but they're isolated from civilization and they're broken husks of their former selves. This show is really very dark. The show could give a reason as to why they couldn't get off. The trees are all too heavy, and can't float, or the island has no trees, or something like that. Or maybe the island has a forcefield that's invulnerable to radar. I don't know. Just some sort of explanation. There never is any explanation.But what bothers me most of all- is that this show had really good potential for a series finale. In the finale, they could finally get off the island. In the last episode, do they get rescued? No, of course not. It's just another plot, like all the other ones. Why? If the show was ending, they should have resolved the main conflict- the conflict of them being on the island. That would have been a good ending. it would have wrapped up everything, made it all seem complete. Instead, they had to make a movie about them getting off the island- which isn't good. I just don't get it. If they had ended the conflict, that would be fine- because we'd know what happened to them. The good? Well, the dream sequences are fantastic- and serve to give the show some diversions away from the setting. My two favorite episodes are the one where they switch bodies and the one about the mutated vegetables. Alan Hale is funny. The theme song is catchy. That's it. That's what I can say about this show. I like it.

I find this show to be an absolute original classic. Why else would it have spanned 6 decades to date. The plot is very original and is actually a social microcosm of the time (the 1960's). Granted, many shows from this era were on the silly side (Munsters, Addams Family, I Dream Of Jeannie, and even Batman). The really outstanding element of this show is how well it was cast. All 7 cast members are very convincing and their chemistry is outstanding. I'm the first to admit that some of the humor is silly. But some of it is not. It also falls under the banner of TV sitcoms with a very catchy soundtrack. The guest stars on this show were very entertaining for the most part (including a very young Kurt Russell). In my opinion, I don't believe that there has ever been a more scrutinized, criticized, nor analyzed show in the history of television. The very exaggerated detail that's questioned is what makes it funny (ie for a 3 hour tour, the Howells are carrying about 30 million dollars). Besides: if they have THAT much money, why are they on a 3 hour tour when they should be sailing on one of their own yachts? See what I mean? To me, there will never be another Gilligan's Island, Honeymooners, or I Love Lucy simply because they are timeless classics.

This is truly classic 1960s TV comedy, and which never gets old. We've watched it countless times and always will, even when we know the outcomes and the various ways that Gilligan can foul things up, some worse than others (he really should have been strangled for just sitting there watching the helicopter take-off without shouting to the others). However, like so many other comedy shows (Seinfeld comes to mind) the situations, the writing, the characters aren't quite yet developed and defined during the initial season, and I avoid these weak, early b&w episodes like the plague, which is why I only own DVD seasons 2 & 3. By season 2, the show hit it's full stride, I don't know why, and I don't think it's the color, but the situations, the characters, and the plots were so much more enjoyable. Growing up with the show, I never questioned the implausible plots, or the way the various guest stars (Kirky Russell, Larry Storch, Hans Conried, Denny Miller, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Don Rickles, Phil Silvers, Rory Calhoun, even sports stars Jim Lefebvre and Roman Gabriel as natives) manage to land on then leave the island while our heroes remain stranded, or the seemingly unlimited wardrobe of the girls and the Howell's-- especially the Howell's-- brought on board for their 3 hour cruise, and they seem the be the stuff of fun trivia today, but the show, largely due to Gilligan's childlike and simple minded antics, and his unending effect on the Skipper's nerves, assures this show to remain among the very best of classic TV comedy shows.

This is, hands down, the funniest show of all time. And there have been some great comedies, from the Beverly Hillbillies to Coach to Raymond. This one is the Tiger Woods of comedy. four men and three women are stranded on an island, for those of you who have been stranded on an island for fifty years and don't know this. Past the comedy is the social commentary on the little guy getting blamed for everything. The skipper represented employers, the professor academia, and the millionaire the wealth of the upper class. And no matter who messed up, it was lowly Gilligan who got the blame. But Gilligan usually got paired with the sexiest, hottest, most gorgeous girl ever on TV, Dawn Welles as Mary Ann was the fantasy of every adolescent. Yes, boys would get into fights over her. You can always tell what sex a poster is by whom they think is beautiful. Ginger was the woman's woman, the one who didn't have natural beauty, but who had all the most expensive clothing, jewelry, and adornments, none of which could help her compete with the stunning Mary Ann. Males all went gaga over Mary Ann, the man's ideal woman. So when a poster says Ginger is hot, you know that poster is a female. (Most women can identify easier with Ginger, and are jealous of Mary Ann.) But more of the comedy. It was just hilarious. This was slapstick, and not serious. The professor was a pre-MacGyver who could make anything out of anything. The millionaire happened to have millions of dollars of cash with him. Some of the funniest scenes were the famous "dream sequences", which became a mainstay on the show, and wasn't used on many comedies before this. It truly broke ground here. The slapstick broke ground for other slapstick comedies of unreal but with a hint at truth proportions (Drew Carey, Night Court, Green Acres). If someone can watch this without laughing, that person is weird.