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Rating: **
Genre: Romantic Island Adventure Comedy MPAA: PG-13 Review #: 20 Cast: Harrison Ford....Quinn Harris Anne Heche....Robin Monroe David Schwimmer....Frank Martin Jacqueline Obradors....Angelica Temuera Morrison....Jager Allison Janney....Marjorie Douglas Weston....Philippe Cliff Curtis....Kip Danny Trejo....Pierce Carlos Andrade....Band member Wayne Aqino....Musician Michael Barretto....Band member Derek Basco....Ricky Ben Bode....Helicopter pilot Odile Broulard....Model Lloyd Chandler....Musician Michael Chapman....Mechanic Pat Cockett....Band member Stephen Conteh....Newspaper salesman Rudy Costa....Band member Roy Dinson Jr.....Bellboy Jake Feagai....Pirate |
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Review:
What happens when Anne Heche and Harrison Ford get marooned on a desert island? Not very much. You wind up with a predictable, episodic cliché. Here's how it goes. Anne Heche is an uptight big-city business chick who is engaged to David Schwimmer. They decide to take a romantic island vacation. The only pilot available is the aging slob Harrison Ford. Of course, Harrison Ford and Anne Heche rub each other the wrong way right off the bat. Well, they make it to the island, but then the plot dictates that Ford and Heche have to run into each other again. When her magazine calls her to make an emergency photo shoot on a neighboring island, the only pilot dumb enough to go is, you guessed it, Harrison Ford. Well, a big storm knocks the plane out of the sky, and it lands on a desert island right out of a Far Side Cartoon. |
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| So, Ford and Heche have all sorts of episodic adventures, which all hold up the movie rules about the uptight one getting in all the trouble, while the laid-back one sits back and laughs. These episodes are pretty funny, like the one where Harrison Ford has to catch a Peacock for food. Unfortunately, the script runs out of ideas, and so the author decides to throw in some pirates. Yes, Pirates. No peg-legs or eye-patches, these are pirates for the 90s! Just guns and a boatload of contrived plot devices. The author resorts to the "Pirate Plot Device" not once, but twice! It's where all of the major tension on the movie comes from. During this whole movie, I kept having flashbacks to good older movies, like "The African Queen", where Humphrey Bogart goes up against a ton of episodic problems and even falls in love, without resorting to the "Pirate Plot Device". |
| Now for the big question: Does the movie entertain? Well, it does about half way. Only about half of the episodes are really funny, but most of those just get a chuckle at Anne Heche's expense. All of the best parts actually deal with David Schwimmer, and Harrison Ford's sidekick, Jacqueline Obradors. They try to deal with the loss of their lovers, and their mutual attraction. Those sequences are much more consistently funny than watching Anne Heche fall down or get chased around by a boar. And it's also more exciting than watching a bunch of pirates try to kill to characters who we really don't care about in the first place. Basically, what we have here is a train wreck of a movie that really could've been something with a little bit more creativity, and a little less reliance on Harrison Ford's "Easygoing Charm". You can't build a movie based entirely on Harrison Ford's "Easygoing Charm". |
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