Warning: Wikipedia contains spoilers
Robin Monroe (Heche), a New York journalist working for Dazzle, a fashion magazine, is invited by her boyfriend Frank (Schwimmer) to spend a one-week holiday with him on the island paradise of Macatea in the South Pacific. For the final leg of their journey the couple have to make do with a small dilapidated aircraft piloted by an unfriendly middle-aged American called Quinn Harris (Ford). A few hours after their arrival, Frank proposes to Robin.
But Robin is a workaholic who cannot say no when she gets a call from her boss asking her to drop over to Tahiti just for one night to supervise some fashion event. She hires Harris to fly her there, but an unexpected thunderstorm forces Harris to make an emergency landing on a desert island. (One of the cinematographic highlights of the movie is the cross cutting sequence in which the forced landing is juxtaposed with a native dance performed for tourists and watched by Frank back at the hotel.)
Meanwhile, Angelica (Obradors), a friend of Harris's, has seduced Frank. Unable to hide his guilty conscience, Frank agrees when Robin breaks off their engagement in order to start a new life with Quinn Harris.
Critics have pointed out certain parallels between Ford and Heche as a bickering couple and Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen.