Six Days Seven Nights (1998)

Thanks to his roles in Star Wars and Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford will go down in the record books for being the highest grossing actor of all time. But that is a reputation built on franchises and an alliance with the might of the Spielberg/Lucas/Coppola alliance, and not really thanks to a great talent for acting. Not that he’s bad, just that he’s perhaps a little limited in his range.

This romantic comedy, then, is not really his cup of tea, and in the role of a hard-living pilot, Ford spends a lot of his time trying not to be Han Solo. This means more overt comedy, to which Ford isn’t really suited, and an emphasis on the fact that he’s not particularly well endowed with survival instincts. Which is unfortunate because he’s trapped on a desert island.

It’s an old formula and this instalment doesn’t buck the trend too much. I personally know of nobody who has ever been marooned on a desert island and yet it seems to keep happening in the movies, no matter how contrived. So here we get a New York assistant editor for a classy women’s magazine on holiday with her boyfriend but suddenly in a plane crash with the rather unsavoury pilot. Fortunately, it doesn’t take them too long to get on, but also, they don’t instantly fall in love either and the film is probably much more interesting for the fact that there are conflicting interests preventing them from getting stuck in immediately.

That doesn’t stop pirates turning up and spoiling the fun, nor David Schwimmer’s appearance as Ross from ‘Friends’. Everything turns out fine though, when an axe and a saw materialise from somewhere and enable the happy couple to fix their plane and fly to safety.

There’s something about Harrison Ford attempting to be funny that I find uneasy, when it’s more than just a sly wisecrack. Nor is he the most charming leading man and when coupled with the heterosexual appealing but famously homosexual Anne Heche there’s very little hope of any chemistry forming between them. Still, at least it tries, and well done to whoever greenlit this project for the sheer gumption they must possess. ‘African Queen’ is still the best version of this story of opposites being forced into affection through extreme circumstances – don’t waste your time here.