Six Days, Seven Nights

Like "The Matchmaker", Six Days, Seven Nights is a romantic comedy following a tried and tested, sustainable formula. Robin Monroe is a busy career woman working at a fashion magazine in New York. In everyday life Robin does not see much of her equally busy boyfriend, Frank Martin, so Frank invites Robin on a romantic holiday on the Pacific island of Makatea. There he proposes to her and she says yes. The idyll does not last long, however, for Robin gets a call from her boss, Marjorie, who asks her to oversee a photo shoot on Tahiti. Robin persuades the pilot Quinn Harris, with whom she and Frank flew to Makatea, to fly her to Tahiti. On the way a violent storm breaks out, so Quinn has to make an emergency landing. Unfortunately the 'runway' is no better than to leave the plane badly damaged. What is more, the island is completely uninhabited.

There is no trace of the detailed realism of "Robinson Crusoe", for the mismatched pair, Quinn and Robin, cope astonishingly well, even when faced with snakes and pirates. The core of the film is of course the relationship between Robin and Quinn, which slowly changes from prejudiced and almost hateful to mutual attraction and love. In parallel with Quinn and Robin's stay on the desert island, we see how Frank falls for Quinn's buxom girlfriend Angelica. As in "The Matchmaker", Quinn and Robin get each other, even though oceans of water and culture separate them. It is, God knows, not the least bit realistic, but it is entertaining, not least because the ping-pong dialogue between Ford and Heche works really well.