Thoughts on Six Days, Seven Nights

 

via Tumblr/Courtesy Disney

"Ready to go."
"Is it safe to fly?"
"It is with me."
"Oh, you're that good, huh?"
"I'm the best you've ever been with."
"... I'm not sure I trust your equipment."
"We may be old, but we're sturdy."

It's time for another installment of What I Like, What I'm Okay With and What I Dislike!

I'm Okay With ... the trade-off in terms of billing and prominence. Harrison Ford got solo above the title billing for Six Days, Seven Nights. It's understandable, since he was and remains a bigger star than Anne Heche. On the other hand, she was the first actor director Ivan Reitman focused on, at about 1:10 into the movie, followed by Anne's credit.

I'm Okay With ... Six Days, Seven Nights' first five minutes being spent establishing the life that Robin (Anne) will soon see an appealing alternative to. Roger Ebert: "She's a high-powered New York magazine editor (the third this month; Tina Brown should collect royalties)." Robin answers to the demanding Marjorie (Allison Janney) but has a boyfriend prone to romantic gestures, Frank (David Schwimmer).

I'm Okay With ... Schwimmer's performance. He's not asked to carry Six Days, Seven Nights, like Harrison and Anne, and I liked that Frank wasn't an obviously unsuitable mate. As mentioned, five of Friends' six stars appeared in at least one 1998 film. I still need to see Kissing a Fool, but it seems that David had already gone as far as he could as a movie star.

I Like ... that we didn't have to wait too long for the male star. Frank surprises Robin with a trip to Makatea. Quinn (Harrison), who shows up just before Reitman's credit, is introduced working on his plane. Both man and machine have seen better days. Alas, Robin and Frank have no choice but to ride with Quinn and Angelica (Jacqueline Obradors). Just over seven minutes into the 97-minute movie, we have our fab four.

I'm Increasingly Impatient With ... how much time it takes until Quinn and Robin are actually marooned. The 20 minutes before that happens include Frank proposing to Robin, Quinn drunkenly hitting on Robin, Marjorie requiring Robin to take a break from her vacation to supervise a cover shoot with Vendela and Evander Holyfield (Hey, It's the Late '90s!) and Robin realizing she's got to be flown by Quinn.

I Dislike ... how broad Anne's acting and Robin's personality is for about the next half-hour. For heaven's sake, Robin takes too much Xanax amod the storm that causes her and Quinn to be stranded. I know Anne had the chance to prove herself as a Julia Roberts-Sandra Bullock-style funny lady, but her hamming it up looks especially strange opposite Harrison in DGAF mode. I wish I knew how much blame to place on the stars, Reitman, debuting screenwriter Michael Browning or script doctors Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel.

I'm Okay With ... the inevitable love connections occuring between Quinn & Robin and Frank & Angelica. I do suspect that had Schwimmer not been in the cast, we wouldn't be spending as much time with the latter pair. Back to Quinn and Robin: just once, I want someone to say that something which supposedly tastes like chicken (in this case, peacock) most certainly doesn't. Ah, well, at least Quinn cooking is a rare moment that doesn't call to mind one of Ford's earlier hits.

I Like ... that Anne dials it down significantly after the movie's halfway point. I thought she and Harrison had decent chemistry when Robin and Quinn comfort each other after discovering that their island is even more obscure than he thought. 

"Ever since we've been here, you've been ... so confident. You have all the answers."

"Well, I'm the captain. That's my job. It's no good for me to go waving my arms in the air and screaming, 'Oh, shit! We're gonna die!' ... Doesn't evoke much confidence, does it?"

"No, no, that does not. I need you to be my confident captain. I can't tell you how difficult this is gonna be for me if you lose it."

"... Okay. Okay. I'm alright now."

I'm Okay With ... Boy, I've been feeling okay with a lot of this movie, haven't I? ... Anyway, I'm okay with Robin learning about Quinn's romantic history. He and Angelica are apparently fuck buddies. Quinn has had a complicated relationship with a woman before. On a scale of 1-10, it was a 12.

I Dislike ... the pirates. Okay, it is cool to see Temuera Morrison and Danny Trejo among them. According to The Gross, the pirates were Lowell & Babaloo's invention. Ebert again: "Whenever pirates turn up in a romance set more recently than 1843, you figure the filmmakers ran out of ideas." I think I could have tolerated the pirates if they were introduced earlier in the story, like if they were rogue resort employees or men that Quinn had pissed off.

I Like ... Quinn & Robin and Frank & Angelica taking things further. Just before the one-hour mark, the castaways share a kiss before having to plunge off a cliff to escape from the pirates. Once alone and safe, they kiss again and apparently just keep from having sex. Shortly after, the idea of kissing yet again is taboo for Quinn & Robin. Back in civilization, Frank & Angelica, believing their mates are dead, face temptation.

I Hate ... that Rita Kempley ended her review with the observations that Heche was "the world's most notorious lipstick lesbian" and that "she seems to have mastered the nuances of heterosexuality, mysterious though they are." I get that the last point was meant to make fun of straight people, but it comes across as patronizing. Todd McCarthy hoped that the "much-bruited concern about public acceptance of Anne Heche as a romantic heroine should become a moot point, since she's the best thing in the picture." "Ms. Heche makes it clear that she can play anybody's love interest," Janet Maslin wrote. Lisa Schwarzbaum: "So, to answer your question: Anne Heche's noisy love affair with Ellen DeGenerest in no way interferes with her convincing portrayal of a hetero cutie."

I Dislike ... Angelica's inevitable live and let live attitude after she and Frank hooked up. "It's just we are going through a terrible ordeal. It's like, when after a funeral, everybody has sex." "Not everybody." "No?"

I Like ... that Quinn and Robin were able to convert his plane into a seaplane. It felt like a good payoff to the earlier joke about Quinn not appearing to be the kind of man who could be given a pocket knife and a Q-tip and use them to construct a shopping mall. Also, I did like Quinn and Robin bonding over the story of his failed marriage and flirting over whether or not he still was sexually desirable. Maslin again: "Mr. Ford ... reaffirms that in his mid-50s, he hasn't aged out of the romantic hero racket."

I'm Okay With ... the pirates' last hurrah, which involves them shooting Quinn in the shoulder and ultimately destroying their own boat.

I Like ... Robin successfully flying the plane back to the resort, even if she wasn't good at landing it.

I'm Okay With ... the five or so minutes of setup before the obligatory grand romantic finale. C'mon, who didn't expect Quinn to push Robin away on the grounds that they come from different worlds, or Robin and Frank to part amicably? The only thing that didn't happen was a final pairing of Frank and Angelica.

I Love ... the grand romantic finale of Quinn running to Robin and Frank's plane, only to find he's too late ... except she got off of it. I'm a softy like that.

"I've decided my life is ... too simple."

"It is?"

"Yeah. I wanna, wanna complicate the hell out of it."

*big ol' kiss*

In my heart, I have to go with ... Not Recommended.

Thoughts:

-- "(Tourists) come here looking for 'the magic,' expecting to find romance ... when they can't find it any other place." "Maybe they will." "It's an island, babe. If you don't bring it here, you won't find it here."

-- Box Office: Grossing $74.3 million domestically on a budget between $65-70 million, this opened at No. 2 and ranked No. 27 for 1998. Amusingly, Six Days, Seven Nights is one rung below Disney's other summer 1998 romance for grownups, The Horse Whisperer.

-- Awards Watch: While Ford won the Blockbuster Entertainment Award in the Comedy/Romance category, Heche, Schwimmer and Obradors lost to Meg Ryan, Greg Kinnear and Stockard Channing. The first two were for You've Got Mail, which had a performance by Tom Hanks that Ford won over. Channing's win was for Practical Magic, compared to costars Aidan Quinn (who also lost to Ford) and Dianne Wiest (who lost to Stockard). Heche was nominated for a Stinkers Bad Movie Award for her work in Six Days and Psycho, but lost to The Spice Girls. Finally, the movie itself won a Golden Raspberry in conjunction with A Perfect Murder and Stepmom as part of the annoying "Gidgets 'n' Geezers" trend.

-- Critic's Corner, the movie: "As long on gorgeous scenery as it is short on new ideas," according to Maslin. Kenneth Turan figured it "must have sounded irrestiable on paper. In fact, on paper it still does. ... What Six Days lacks is what no one thought was necessary, the spark of originality." Kempley: "Romantic comedies don't get more formulaic than this bouncing screwball valentine, but then they don't get much more delightful, either." Schwarzbaum: "Perfectly servicable, utterly formulaic, completely biodegradable."

-- Critic's Corner, Harrison and Anne: "(They) make an appealing, wisecracking team, and they look comfortable with the rugged demands of their roles," Maslin wrote. Turan: "Ford is intimately familiar with guy guy parts, and he handles this one like the smooth veteran he is. ... (Heche has) never before had the chance to exhibit a wisecracking Barbara Stanwyck side, and she handles the opportunity with skill and fine style." "Harriston Ford has an easy appeal in movies like this and never pushes too hard," Roger Ebert observed. "Anne Heche plays a nice duet with him."

-- Fanservice Junction: Obradors wins this one for the sight of Angelica in her bra and thong. On the other hand, Anne is braless in several scenes, and Harrison's first scene has him wearing a pair of cutoffs open to the navel.

-- Hey, It's ...!: Amy Sedaris, whose face is never fully seen, as Robin's secretary. Taj Mahal, as a performer at the resort in Makatea.

-- "So, uh, where are we goin'?" "Um, your place is in New York, right?" "Uh-huh." "I don't think I can wait that long. How about my place?" "Oh, yeah. Your little house on the beach." "Uh, more like a shack, actually." "A shack?" "It's, uh -- it's not much." "Uh-huh. You do have a bed, don't you?" "Are you gonna be this fussy about everything?"

-- Next: The X-Files. On deck: Mulan.