Jim Backus

The mining of old TV shows for new movie ideas continues with this latest news: they're turning 'Gilligan's Island' into a big-screen movie.

How is this seen as a good idea in the executive offices at Warner Brothers? How exactly will they make a one-time 90 minute movie out of a dumb (but in a lovable way) show from the 60s? As we've been saying here for the past several years, big-screen adaptations of old TV shows usually don't work ('Bewitched,' 'The Beverly Hillbillies,' 'Charlie's Angels,' the list goes on and on) because it's not that those shows necessarily had brilliant plots, it's because they existed in a certain time and had a specific cast that we love and remember. Bob Denver is Gilligan. I'm not going to go see a big-screen version just because they cast, say, Christopher Mintz-Plasse in the role (no casting yet, but I can picture him being considered).

Every year during the holidays, we all enjoy different Christmas movies and evergreen TV specials. One that they don't run often any more but I remember with great fondness is Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. Fortunately, it's now available on DVD, and if you think you've seen the best of Charles Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge but haven't seen this one, I urge you to reserve judgment till you do. Don't laugh! I'm absolutely serious. Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol is a fantastic version of Dickens' short story.

Sure, sure, the animation is nothing to write home about. But the script and those songs are! It was 1962. NBC aired the one-hour cartoon special on December 18. It wasn't just any cartoon either. The idea was that Mr. Magoo was cast in a stage production of A Christmas Carol, so the entire enterprise had a theater angle.

A lot of people think that The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island is the worst example of the Gilligan's Island movies and spinoffs we've had over the years. But this could rival it. It's a show I put out of my mind until I saw a link about it on Pop Culture Junk Mail. It's Gilligan's Planet. That's right, planet. They tried to get off the island via rocket ship and landed on another world (but couldn't find their way back to Hawaii??). Please note that Dawn Wells does the voice of Maryann and Ginger.

[via The BooBerry Alarm Clock]