Robin Munro, an employee of a New York-based fashion magazine, is enjoying a short holiday on a remote South Sea island when she receives a telephone call from her editor, asking her to go to Tahiti for an urgent assignment. The only way to get there is by a small single-engined plane, and halfway through the trip the pilot is forced by bad weather to make an emergency landing on a small uninhabited island. The plane's landing gear is damaged, meaning that they are unable to take off again, and the radio equipment was put out of action by the storm, making their chances of rescue unlikely. Fortunately, however, Robin and the pilot, Quinn Harris, find themselves falling in love.
This being a romantic comedy, there have to be some obstacles to their love. Robin and Quinn are complete opposites, he being a tough man of action and a lover of the great outdoors, whereas she is a suave, metropolitan New Yorker. Initially, they take a dislike to each other. Most importantly, Robin has a fiancé, Frank- indeed, they have come on holiday together to celebrate their engagement. Quinn also has a mistress, a local girl named Angelica, although this relationship does not seem to involve a great deal of emotional commitment, at least not on his part.
In real life, matters like this might prove insuperable obstacles. In a rom-com, however, they are less obstacles than standard plot clichés. (See, for example, "You've Got Mail", in which the same three obstacles were overcome equally easily). The three basic rules of love and marriage in rom-coms can be summarised as i) opposites attract, ii) lovers always start off by hating one another, iii) the big-name star always gets the girl, so you needn't worry about other boyfriends on the horizon.
Harrison Ford is normally associated either with action adventures, like the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" series, or political or legal thrillers such as "Patriot Games" or "The Fugitive". He is not, therefore, perhaps the first actor one would think of when casting the hero of a romantic comedy. He was, however, surprisingly good in "Working Girl" (even if "Sabrina" was something of a disappointment) and here, as Quinn, he is able to draw upon his normal gruff and laconic but steady and dependable screen persona in order to emphasise the contrast with the more voluble and emotional Robin. It is clear that he is, underneath his tough exterior, a man of strong emotions, even if he has difficulty in expressing them- he left America to live in the islands after a painful divorce when his wife left him for his best friend. There are, in fact, brief attempts to turn this into an adventure film, when Quinn and Robin have to battle a gang of pirates, although even these turn into comedy when the pirates manage to sink their own ship, making them seem more like inept buffoons than ruthless cutthroats.
Anne Heche presumably took this role to bolster her image as Hollywood's first born-again heterosexual, although her Robin struck me as being a bit too abrasive- not the girl I would choose to be marooned on a desert island with. Her treatment of the hapless Frank, whom David Schwimmer played as goofy but likable, also struck me as rather heartless. (I can foresee that Schwimmer is going to have a real problem with typecasting- every character he plays reminds me of his Ross from "Friends"). The scriptwriters seem to have shared my view about Robin's heartlessness, as they included a rather improbable scene where Frank beds Angelica while both are fretting over their missing partners. The idea was presumably to undermine the audience's sympathy for Frank by insisting that he is as guilty of infidelity as Robin is. We never actually find out how Frank's romance with Angelica progresses, but as she is a very underdeveloped character, we never really care.
The film that I was most reminded of was that great eighties rom-com "Crocodile Dundee", which also featured a young female New York journalist who falls to an exotic location where she falls for an older man of action. "Crocodile Dundee", however, is a far better film, treating this theme with a great deal more style and humour. Harrison's Quinn is not in the same league as Paul Hogan's Mick Dundee, one of the great comic characters of all time. "Six Days, Seven Nights" makes for enjoyable if undemanding watching, but it lacks both the wit and the psychological insight that mark the best romantic comedies. 6/10
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