# Six Days Seven Nights (1998)

### reviewed by
Berge Garabedian

    SIX DAYS, SEVEN NIGHTS
    RATING:  7 / 10 --> Good movie

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>From the man who brought us GHOSTBUSTERS and TWINS, comes a story starring Han Solo, Harrison Ford, and the woman presently dating TV star Ellen DeGeneres, Anne Heche. Director Ivan Reitman straps himself behind the camera for this fuzzy piece of ROMANCING THE STONE (7.5/10)-lite.

PLOT: Loving, romantic man takes his lady of choice to an exotic island for some time alone together. While there, she gets called away on business, and is taken to Tahiti, by a carefree and wayward pilot. During a storm, their plane gets hit by lightning and crashes onto an unknown island. Stuck with one another, the duo attempt to find a way back to civilization, and gradually get to know each other better.

CRITIQUE: Mindless fluff piece does not pass itself off as anything more than a simple 95-minute exercise in mild comedy, overly precise romance, decent chemistry and a non-threatening adventure. I enjoyed this movie on the whole because I was able to rest my brain for a quick little while, and allow myself to follow the misadventures of two charming actors, whose fate never seemed like much of a mystery to me. The film was easy to digest, well enough to enjoy along a round of tasty hot nachos, and perfectly paced as to never allow you to fully grasp the generic nature of its essence.

Kudos go out to both Harrison Ford and Anne Heche, who luckily for the audience, seem to have sparked off a few rays of charm into their characters. The opposite can be said of David Schwimmer, who still cannot seem to play anything but that dolt-headed puppy-eyed love schmuck from his hit TV show "Friends". That aside, I was impressed by his character's real struggle over extra-curricular sexual activities, and the actual conscience that he displayed in its aftermath. Unlike many men in other movies, this character showed us that a man isn't always ready to jump into bed with a chesty knockout at a drop of a dime, but that morals, ethics and one's conscience always play a revolving part in any such decision.

Overall, the film doesn't have many standout scenes to write home about, but does offer some beautiful shots of the island's panoramic possessions, along with some engaging performances by its leads. You'll laugh, you'll sigh, you won't fall asleep and you'll forget about the whole thing in the morning. If these are some of the elements that you are looking for in a short film mixed in with a little adventure, then this one's your bag o' nuts! If not, skip this, and your life will forever be the same for having missed it.

Little Known Facts about this film and its stars: Perhaps the most fateful casting of Harrison Ford's career was for a role that he very nearly passed up. A promising young director named George Lucas offered him a supporting part in his film AMERICAN GRAFFITI (7/10), but Ford walked off the set in disgust when he learned that he would be paid only $485 a week, less than half what he was earning at that time as a carpenter. Luckily, he changed his mind when the studio offered him an extra fifteen dollars a week. He also got the part of Indiana Jones in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (8/10), after Spielberg and Lucas could not schedule filming of the movie around their first choice's TV schedule, as Tom Selleck had a commitment to his hit TV show "Magnum P.I.". Harrison's wife is a screenwriter in her own right, and counts E.T. (8/10) and Martin Scorsese's KUNDUN among her handful of credits. In fact, in 1996, Harrison was listed as one of 50 people barred from entering Tibet, after Disney clashed with Chinese officials over the film KUNDUN, which his wife wrote. Anne Heche's father, Donald Heche, was a choir director in a Baptist church who frequented gay bars at night. Heche found out about her father's double life at the age of twelve, as he lay dying of AIDS. "I watched my dad disintegrate from AIDS because he was ashamed to be what he wanted to be," Heche relates. He died the following year. In 1991, she won a Daytime Emmy for playing Outstanding Younger Actress in a Daytime Drama Series for TV's "Another World". Actress Jacqueline Obradors, who plays the playful Angelica in this film, was discovered by a producer while she was working as a grocery store clerk. Director Ivan Reitman was born in Czechoslovakia, but brought up in Canada. David Schwimmer graduated from Northwestern University. His mother is a lawyer who took care of Roseanne's first divorce.

    Review Date:         December 27, 1998
    Director:                Ivan Reitman
    Writer:                 Michael Browning
    Producers:         Ivan Reitman, Roger Birnbaum and Wallis Nicita
    Actors:                 Harrison Ford as Quinn Harris
                    Anne Heche as Robin Monroe
                    David Schwimmer as Frank Martin
                    Jacqueline Obradors as Angelica
    Genre:                 Comedy
    Year of Release:         1998Visit JoBlo's Movie Emporium
    http://surf.to/joblo(c) 1998 Berge Garabedian

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