The Love Boat

TV Movie featuring several stories about passengers on a Mexican cruise.

This is the first of the three "Love Boat" pilots and is pretty much a disaster on every level.

The biggest problem here is the casting. Quite frankly the regular cast is just terrible. They have no chemistry as a group and of the bunch, only Dick Van Patten (the doctor) and Theodore Wilson (Isaac the bartender) turn in what I would consider decent performances. Ted Hamilton is a total stiff as the captain. And Terri O'Mara, playing the cruise director, has a perfectly pleasant screen presence, but her acting leaves a bit to be desired (although, my understanding is that ABC saw "The Love Boat" as a star-making vehicle for her and specifically requested her casting).

The production seems to have had some significant problems: Director Alan Myerson appears to have been fired mid-production, since he is credited as co-director along with Richard Kinon in a couple of the stories while Kinon receives sole credit on the rest. And there's a fairly prominent end credit for separately written and directed (by Kinon) "Special Material."

The one thing I did kind of like, though, is the overall tone of the movie. Unlike the other pilots and the series, this movie is (by 1976 TV movie standards) fairly risqué. O'Mara's cruise director tells Doc that she's bored with being all goody-goody and may just "do it in the purser's lounge" to shake things up a little. You'd never hear Julie McCoy say that.

Still, despite everything, ABC liked the format enough to green light another TV movie/pilot the following year.

This the TV movie that launched a highly popular TV series of the same time, that ran from 1977 through 1987. And, that was credited with reviving overall public interest in cruising for vacation and leisure. What was a very small industry of cruise lines at the time soon mushroomed into a huge industry that still thrives well into the 21st century.

The movie itself was quite good and well received in its day - much better than IMDb's showing in April 2023 of an overall rating of just 5.6 form 261 viewers who rated it. But, just as it shows the higher rating for the TV series on IMDb, the audience response for the TV series was much better and higher than for this movie. This is a good example of how the general mood or character of humor and how funny some things are changes over time. Some of this humor will seem lame to younger audiences of modern times.

But, the characters here are played by a superb cast of actors of the day - especially in comedy. While the plot for this "pilot" film was almost solely comedy and romance, the TV series in time working in some nice, short segments of drama to make its shows more substantive and original.

Don Adams, Tom Bosley, Gabe Kaplan, Harvey Korman, Hal Linden, Cloris Leachman and others are fun to watch in this film. It's a nice look at the origin of the TV series, although the cast was a complete turnover from the film to the series.

Like everyone alive in the 70's, I was forced to watch 'Love Boat' from time to time by inconsiderate family members with a penchant for this kind of sap. To this day, 'Love Boat' stands out in my mind as justification for never watching dramatic TV unless 'Twin Peaks' or 'Miami Vice' reruns are showing. I know some folks enjoy this show today for its "camp value". I've never understood that rationale; why would you want to watch garbage just so that you could laugh at it. Do yourself a favour and read a book instead, and no, Cloris Leachman's biography doesn't count.

Before reality TV they had sitcom's from *ell. Other mindless TV I liked as a child. With TVland and Deja vu channel in Canada viewers see what once was. I can not believe some of the crap I watched as a kid. This show was a big deal on Friday night with my sister and I eating popcorn. Some of it is funny, but the rest is just mindless. At least it is done on a higher budget than today's who is gonna get voted out of the toolshed. Watch them make a reality TV show out of that idea also. I believe this is another part of the 70's and the early 80s that is forgotten. How could they make these shows last so long. This show like Happy Days was on so long, I could not believe it still was on the air when they ended it. I find TV could end a few TV series about 3 years earlier.

I not only saw this film, I was a still photographer on the three day cruise to Ensenada, Mexico when they shot most of the film. One little known incident happened when Hal Linden joined the company in Ensenada. To everyones surprise and chagrin he came limping down the dock with a broken leg he had suffered in a skiing accident. However Jeraldine Saunders the author was aboard and they were able to rewrite the script and carry on so that's "showbiz". After that I went on most of the following trips except the one to Panama and consider Gavin and crew good friends. On one trip,Aaron Spelling, his wife Candy, and Tori (then just a baby) joined us in Hermisillo and I was able to meet them. I want to extend my sincere sympathy to the family with Aaron's passing...