Six Days Seven Nights (1998)

Six Days Seven Nights (1998)
Harrison Ford makes a good drunk-pilot-cum-wife-stealer

From the latter stages of nineties twee comes this nonchalant rom-com starring Harrison Ford, David Schwimmer and Anne Heche, that makes Disney films seem nightmarish.

Heche and Schwimmer plays a young couple who have escaped their busy New York lives, and gone on a short holiday on a tropical island. Their romantic getaway is soon riddled with PG problems though. The first one comes in the form of a surly pilot played by Ford, who takes them on his bordering scrapheap plane to the island - a journey made even more irritating by Ford’s heavy-bosomed, and dangerously upbeat girlfriend.

Once at the resort, our young couple soon experience another setback. Shortly after accepting a marriage proposal from Frank (Schwimmer), Robin (Heche) must leave him to go on a work trip several hours away, which requires another trip in the rickety plane. The inevitable happens, and Heche and Ford are stranded after their plane hits a storm, and must explore their equal distaste for each other whilst attempting to survive. They encounter lack of water, snakes in their pants, and the odd homicidal pirate, but their romantic feelings for each other become the film’s biggest danger.

Nineties feel-good does not come more concentrated. From the off, Six Days Seven Nights is an adventure-filled comedy, with plenty of mild romance to round the package off with. Characters are ridiculously flat, making them appear like they are in a sit-com, but the overall effect is entertaining…as long as you loved nineties movies.

It was a pre-cursor for many films that now seem set in beautiful locations in order to obscure the fact that the plot is infantile (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Just Go With It), but there is a lot more charm in this movie, in particular in Ford’s performance which is lovable throughout.