by Rich Elias, Jun 10, 1998

• Rated PG-13
• 2 1 /2 Stars

Harrison Ford stars as a South Seas pilot named Quinn, who's almost as old as his airplane. He makes a living shuttling tourists like Robin Monroe to an island resort for expensive vacations. Robin (Ann Heche) is a New York magazine editor (cell phone, designer clothes) taking a break in paradise with her plot-device boyfriend (David Schwimmer). He's romantic. She's romantic. The phone rings. She's got to fly to Tahiti to oversee a photo shoot.

A storm forces Quinn's plane to land on deserted island. The radio's broke. So is the landing gear. That's about all the story there is in "Six Nights, Seven Days" because from then on it tries to be "The African Queen," another story about a mismatched pair facing the adventure of their lives. It's the epic story of love and survival in a place where, for the first time in her life, Robin can't raise a signal on her pocket Motorola.

The story is forgettable. So are most characters. Her boyfriend, waiting anxiously for news back at the resort, downs a few Mai-Tais with Quinn's curvy girlfriend. Blah blah blah. Meanwhile, back on their deserted island, Robin snipes at Quinn, he snipes at her. Blah blah blah. It's Hepburn versus Bogart and Bogart versus Hepburn, only not so well written.

But "Six Days, Seven Nights" manages to entertain even without a plot worth talking about. Producer-director Ivan Reitman takes full advantage of star power. Harrison Ford belongs in the small class of actors whose name draws an audience, often a mostly female audience. He gets the chance to exercise two or three facial expressions which have served him well for the last quarter century: a lopsided smile aimed at Heche when he wants to express scorn or interest or amusement, and knitted eyebrows directed at the plane's controls when he want to express anxiety or fear or concern, like just before the plane crashes.

Heche is more of a surprise, if only because her previous mainstream pictures haven't required much from her. She was appropriately obnoxious in "Wag the Dog," forgettable in the forgettable "Volcano," but interesting in the art house release "Walking and Talking." In "Six Days," she has to overcome a mediocre script which forces her to act like a ditzy ninny much of the time and a lead actor who relies manly on one-liners and gestures.

Heche, of course, is known throughout the galaxy as Ellen DeGeneres' lover. (It was on TV so it must be so!) For Reitman, this connection indirectly raises possibilities the movie deftly exploits. Heche is attractive and very feminine, not a beauty but possessed on a slender frame ("too thin" is Quinn's verdict) and cornflower blue eyes which sparkle in close-up shots. But it's clear the actress is not going to be another Sandra Bullock melts-on-cue type. Her sexual orientation also piques our interest in how Reitman is going to handle the inevitable relationship that develops between her and Ford.

I want to be clear that these comments do not reflect approval or disapproval of Heche's lifestyle. My interest is in how a wispy romantic comedy like this one uses the off-camera personas of its stars to make the movie more engaging than it ought to be. We don't know whether the "real" Heche could ever fall for the "real" Harrison Ford. But this question intrudes as we watch "Six Days" for signs of "chemistry" between the two. And it's there. Ford and Heche are very good together, and I think she deserves all the credit.

But the contrast between Ford's real life and reel life is also exploited by Reitman. Like Warren Beatty and Robert Redford, Harrison Ford is now a Star Emeritus. He's been sexy so long that it's tough to remember that the actor is almost eligible to collect Social Security. "Six Days" has fun with this when Heche quizzes him about his age. The women who make up Ford's core audience (he's an action figure women like to watch) don't want him to get older because that means they're getting older too. But there comes a time when nobody, not even female Ford fans, wants to see Ford or Redford or Beatty get sweaty with a woman thirty years their junior.

The summer of 1998 must be a watershed season. We've watched Beatty win Halle Berry in "Bulworth," Redford win Kristin Scott Thomas in "Horse Whisperer," and now Ford win Anne Heche in "Six Days" -- without a single sex scene in any of these movies. Call it a victory for old-fashioned romance. Or call it the inevitable fear of a generation of men who need Viagra to see what's happening below their bellies.

The waning studliness of these male stars is the subtext in each of these movies, not in the plots so much as in our reaction to the actors. In "Bulworth" and "Horse Whisperer," the younger woman is seen as a proper reward for the aging hero but the stories contrive to prevent consummation. "Six Days, Seven Nights" puts Heche on a dessert cart as well as desert island. She's Ford's femme brulee and Heche is absolutely terrific in the role. But beneath the comedy there's the uncomfortable feeling that "Six Days, Seven Nights" plays out one of the oldest masculine fantasies, the fantasy that any real man, like the kind Ford's portrayed for a few decades, knows how to straighten out a woman-lover.