Six Days, Seven Nights (1998) / Comedy-Romance

MPAA Rated: PG-13 for language, sensuality and brief violence
Running Time: 98 min.

Cast: Harrison Ford, Anne Heche, David Schwimmer, Jacqueline Obradors, Temuera Morrison, Allison Janney, Douglas Weston, Cliff Curtis, Danny Trejo, Amy Sedaris
Director: Ivan Reitman
Screenplay: Michael Browning
Review published June 12, 1999

An assistant magazine editor (Heche, Wag the Dog) and her boyfriend (Schwimmer, Kissing a Fool) take a trip to a tropical island for six days and seven nights (hence the name of the film.) While there he proposes and she accepts, but a day later she is called to travel to Tahiti for a magazine shoot. She flies with the man that took her to the island, an underachieving lush (Ford, Air Force One), but complications ensue due to bad weather and they end up crashing on a deserted island with seemingly no way to get off and no way to communicate their location. Of course, they don't get along, and of course they begin to grow attached to each other.

It's mystifying what Harrison Ford may have seen in the script that would lead him to waste his time here, maybe spending months amid all the beautiful scenery was the main motivation, but this film is nothing special. It is entertaining while it lasts, but it is totally unremarkable, and despite the fact that the two leads are good, there is little in the way of a believable chemistry between them to care as their relationship develops.

Still the film could have worked to a much more successful degree had they not taken a wrong turn by introducing murderous pirates, and the lightweight amiability of the tone turns sour. Schwimmer and Obradors (Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo) are pretty bad in their respective roles as boyfriend and girlfriend of the two leads, and director Reitman (Fathers' Day, Junior) does what he can with a script that doesn't exactly sparkle with witty dialogue and is derivative and predictable. Still not bad, but definitely a disappointing entry in the impressive Harrison Ford filmography.

Qwipster's rating:

©1999 Vince Leo