Latest video: Pass the tissues

RUNAWAY BRIDE

**
In stores March 8

Running time: 116 mins

Ten years after it captured the multiplexes Pretty Woman remains one of Hollywood's most loved films. The unlikely story of a rich guy who falls for a hooker made Julia Roberts a superstar and had studios begging her to lock collagen with her unlikely lover, Richard Gere, all over again. At the end of the decade they agreed, with a bit of role-reversal.

In Runaway Bride Gere plays newspaper columnist Ike Graham. A drunk tells him about a woman in his town named Maggie Carpenter who has left seven or eight guys stranded at the altar. Ike writes a column about her and is astonished when she writes a nasty letter to the editor. She only stranded three guys, she says, doesn't he check his facts? So he travels to the picture-postcard village where Maggie lives with her hard-drinking dad, her best friend Peggy the hair stylist, and grandma.

Yes, there will be fights, make-ups, the dawning of true lurrrve, a crisis, then Ike and Maggie will find themselves at the altar. You know what's going to happen but you'll get the tape, chocolates and a box of tissues anyway.

TARZAN

****

In stories March 8

Running time: 88 mins

Tarzan doesn't swing, Tarzan doesn't fall, Tarzan virtually skateboards through a marvellous animated jungle in the latest version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' adventure about the boy who grew up among giant apes.

Hollywood has made more movies about the jungle boy than any other character - not bad for a fictional series written by a man who never went to Africa. This one runs through the headlines of how the British baby and his parents were shipwrecked on the African coast, built a treehouse and lived in it. When Sabor the leopard kills his parents (off-screen) the boy is discovered by the curious gorilla/soccer mom Kala (voiced by Glenn Close). She names the baby Tarzan and brings him home to the family.

Life's pretty cool (apart from when the leopards treat the apes as their supermarket). Along comes Jane (Minnie Driver) and her father, Professor Porter (Nigel Hawthorne), to study the gorillas with their guide, Clayton (Brian Blessed). He has plans for the apes and, of course, Tarzan has to save them and fall in love with the gurrrl. Will he return to London with her, or will she stay in the jungle? A Disney movie so grownups won't need to vet it before renting.

LAKE PLACID

*

In stores March 8

Running time: 82 mins


If you thought Anaconda was bad...Black Lake in Maine is home to a 10m crocodile that stays in the water, happily snacking on bears and cows, until scuba-diving scientists jump in too. Then it eats a scientist and half a ranger. Pausing only briefly to wonder how an Asian croc got into an inland American lake, an odd crew of ranger (Bill Pullman), paleontologist (Bridget Fonda), sheriff (Brendan Gleeson) and millionaire/croc-lover/mythology professor (Oliver Platt) go a-huntin' for the beast, watched by the mysterious widder-woman (Betty White), who lives in a lakeside cottage and lost her husband a few years ago. Kind of a cheap, landlocked Jaws that's so camp it's funny.