THE AISLE SEAT - "6 DAYS, 7 NIGHTS"
by Mike McGranaghan
Harrison Ford has great taste in action scripts, but lousy taste in romantic comedies. It isn't that he's incapable of playing a romantic lead, it's just that he picks projects that are not worth his considerable talents. His last foray into the genre was the tepid Sabrina. Now he's back with 6 Days, 7 Nights, a poorly conceived movie that abruptly switches direction half-way through and never recovers.
Ford stars as Quinn, a rugged man's-man pilot hired to fly a fashion photographer named Robin (Anne Heche) and her boyfriend Frank (David Schwimmer) to an island getaway. Quinn's plane is old and unattractive, but it gets them there. Also on board is Quinn's busty lover, who has enough air in her head to help a mountain climber breathe atop Everest. During what should be a romantic week with Frank, Robin is called by her editor and instructed to fly to another nearby island for a quickie photo shoot. Despite her distaste for him, she gets Quinn to take her, but when the plane is struck by lightning, it crashes, leaving Quinn and Robin stranded on a deserted island.
You guessed it: this is yet another movie about two people who hate each other, get trapped in solitude together, and bicker incessantly before figuring out that they are really in love. This plot is as old as they come, but it gets recycled here by top talent like Ford, Heche, and director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Dave). You've seen this story done before, and you may think you know everything that will happen, but you're wrong. 6 Days, 7 Nights has a big surprise. In the middle of the familiar proceedings, along comes...a group of pirates. That's right - pirates. It's not enough that Quinn and Robin must hide their undeniable love; they must also fight for their lives against a merciless band of killer pirates.
The pirates represent a total bankruptcy of imagination, as though the film's producers thought it couldn't work without tossing in some mindless action. Maybe they worried that Ford's action fans would be disappointed if he didn't fight a few baddies. Maybe they were hedging their bets on the romantic chemistry following the announcement of Heche's homosexuality (for the record, Heche has always been a talented, spirited performer and - while I never once believed Quinn and Robin were in love - it is the screenplay that is at fault, not the performers). Either way, a semi-charming romantic comedy falls off the deep end once it kicks into action gear. Now it's two formulaic movies instead of one.
It gets worse. To escape the island (and the pirates), Quinn and Robin devise a plan that, in reality, would take days to accomplish but which, in movie time, they manage to pull off in an afternoon (At this point, I assume everyone knows it's a given that they won't be left for dead on that island). This is by far the lowest point in the film, the exact moment when it reaches its pinnacle of desperation.
Any charm that 6 Days, 7 Nights has comes from its stars. Ford is the epitome of a movie star. It's impossible to deny his charisma or talent. Heche is also a terrific performer (she was great in last winter's Wag the Dog). Both stars manage to put some punch in the one-liners. Good or bad, they are clearly committed to the material. And Schwimmer, in a supporting role, is very funny, particularly when he and Quinn's girlfriend get drunk together.
The problem is in the screenplay and direction, which are pedestrian at best. With a cast like this, why settle for the usual plot mechanisms in which man and woman meet, bicker, and fall in love? 6 Days, 7 Nights puts no new spin on the material whatsoever. It's all done on auto-pilot. I have an idea for how it could have worked with the same stars and characters: have the feuding Quinn and Robin be glad to leave the island and get the hell away from each other once and for all. Now that would be a movie.
(
out of four)
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