Six Days Seven Nights (1998)

Movie Info

I guess the location shoot ate up all the money on this scene

When Robin Monroe (Anne Heche) learns her boyfriend Frank (David Schwimmer) is taking her away for a week vacation in Makatea, she finds herself in an island paradise.  Robin is called back to Tahiti for a photo shoot for her magazine, she finds herself trapped on an island with her cantankerous pilot Quinn Harris (Harrison Ford).  As Frank and Quinn’s friend Angelica (Jacqueline Obradors) join the search for Quinn and Robin, Robin and Quinn find themselves on the run from pirates out for blood.

Directed by Ivan Reitman, Six Days Seven Nights is a romantic action adventure.  The film was released to negative reviews but a relatively strong box office return.

Six Days Seven Nights goes down as one of my first DVDs.  It wasn’t because I bought it, but because I received it and a number of other DVDs free with the purchase of my DVD player…I had seen the movie while working at the movie theater and didn’t watch it again…revisiting the film, it remains a rather ho-hum romantic adventure.

I am going to execute you for the poor chemistry

The story goes for a Romancing the Stone type vibe.  It has the characters arguing and bickering for much of the movie and *shock* falling in love.  You also don’t want to dislike the main character for dumping David Schwimmer (especially with the popularity of Friends at the time) so he fortunately meets someone as well.  It is mundane, it is cheesy, and it is flat.

What raised Romancing the Stone was the great chemistry between Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, but Heche and Ford feel flat.  Not only is the age difference too great, but Heche really comes off as more obnoxious than lovable.  The film faced problems at its release in that Heche came out with Ellen DeGeneres right as the film was going into production, but Ford pushed for her to be kept on…this cast a cloud over the release at the time (and it is interesting to see how times have changed).

Wow…the chemistry is like…paste

The movie also is rather cheap.  The location is great, but it feels like having the cast and crew in paradise was the main expense of the movie.  The movie needs to be bigger, have potentially bigger sets and locations, but it doesn’t do that.

Six Days Seven Nights is like being served mush.  You can survive on it, but it isn’t very good.  You can get by watching the movie with very little pain or effort, but it isn’t very inspiring at all.  Find a better romantic comedy or a better action film.  Six Days Seven Nights isn’t it.