Rating: - Worth watching only if you're a Gilligan fan...
....or maybe it isn't.

Six out of seven of the original cast members (Bob Denver, Alan Hale, Jr., Jim Backus, Natalie Schaffer, Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells - Tina Louise was noticably absent and was replaced with another actress) reunited to do this TV movie in 1978, and watching this goes to show that sometimes you can milk a good thing only so far. Having grown up watching and loving "Gilligan's Island" run in syndication as a kid, this movie was a disappointment to me, but in comparison to the other Gilligan movies (and that awful TBS reality series that was on the air a couple of years ago - "The REAL Gilligan's Island" - ugh) that followed, it looks like "Citizen Kane".

Our favorite seven castaways, who have been shipwrecked for 15 years, are finally rescued. They go their separate ways and resume with their individual lives. However, much has changed in the world since 1964 and they all find it difficult to adjust to life in pre-Reagan era America. They found life on the island that they called home for so many years was much more simple. The seven of them genuinely cared about one another, but see little of this attitude in the people in their reclaimed lives. One by one, they realize that getting rescued probably turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing. This is a true example of being careful for what you wish for because you might get it - what you may get is not everything you imagined it would be. I have to say that the same applies to all of us who grew up watching the reruns of this show - we wondered what became of the passengers of the S.S. Minnow after it went off the air.

It's a good story idea that might have worked if it were done the right way, but the script was just plain insipid and didn't really take advantage of the possibilities that were there. Yeah, I know the original "Gilligan" episodes didn't make much, if any sense, but you knew that they were supposed to be silly and you enjoyed it for that. All the fun and the great one-liners that you loved in the series just isn't present in this movie. No funny punchlines, no enjoyable slapstick - nothing. I felt bad for the actors, who had to lumber through this disaster of a screenplay. The writers made Gilligan even more naive and stupid than he was in the original series and having Russian spies lurking after him after the rescue, this just didn't work for me. This movie is where the Gilligan saga should have ended, but it didn't.

Like most have said here, the DVD quality is horrible. No digital remastering, no Dolby sound, poor editing of the original movie...no need to go on as how bad it is.

I would only recommend this if you are a die-hard GI fan and if you fit that description, then get it - but on VHS. A far better purchase (and a more interesting one, I might add) is the DVD "Surviving Gilligan's Island - The Incredibly True Story Of The Longest Three-Hour Tour In History" (2001) - an excellent film/documentary about the inner workings and behind-the-scenes conflicts about the show and the actors. The roles in the movie are played by other actors, but features input from the late Bob Denver, Dawn Wells, Russell Johnson and series creator Sherwood Schwartz, who all collaborated to make this project happen. Skip "Rescue" and check out "Surviving Gilligan's Island" instead.