New Films

DON'T GO BREAKING MY HEART (PG)

Director: Willi Patterson

Starring: Anthony Edwards, Jenny Seagrove

So how bad is Don't Go Breaking My Heart? Well, first off, it wastes the skills of ER's Anthony Edwards as a Yankee sports therapist adrift in Blighty. Secondly, it overplays the supposed charms of Jenny Seagrove as the widowed mum he gets together with. This antique of a romantic weepie wheezes towards a finale so predictable that you'd have to be dead not to see it coming. West End: ABC Shaftesbury Avenue, Odeon Haymarket, Odeon Kensington, Odeon Marble Arch, Odeon Swiss Cottage, Warner Village West End. And local cinemas

I THINK I DO (15)

Director: Brian Sloan

Starring: Alexis Arquette, Christian Maelan

Ah, the wedding caper. An excuse for reunions, for an ensemble cast, for the tension of etiquette against emotion. Writer-director Brian Sloan ticks all the right boxes during this spry baby-boomer outing, but it's too hyperactive and ingratiating for its own good. West End: ABC Shaftesbury Avenue

JACK FROST (PG)

Director: Troy Miller

Starring: Michael Keaton, Mark Addy

The respective trajectories of two stars meet for an instant in this out-of-season Yuletide tale. On the way down goes Michael Keaton as a self-absorbed bluesman who dies and then gets reincarnated as a snowman. And on the way up is The Full Monty's Mark Addy as his salt-of-the-earth best mate. They meet, they pass, and formula fun is had by all. West End: UCI Whiteleys, Virgin Fulham Road, Virgin Trocadero, Warner Village West End. And local cinemas

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (LA VITA E BELLA) (PG)

Director: Robert Benigni

Starring: Robert Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi

See The Independent Recommends, right. West End: Barbican Screen, Curzon Mayfair, Odeon Kensington, Ritzy Cinema, Screen on the Hill, UCI Whiteleys, Virgin Chelsea. And local cinemas

MADELINE (U)

Director: Daisy Von Scherler Mayer

Starring: Frances McDormand, Nigel Hawthorne

All aboard for storybook Fifties Paris. That ginger-bread house on the corner is the boarding school attended by nine-year-old Madeline (Hatty Jones). That hatchet-faced woman out front is the strict instructor (Frances McDormand). That car going by is a Citroen. You get the picture. This overclogged rendering of Ludwig Bemelman's kids' stories looks a shade one-dimensional; all artistry and no art. West End: Clapham Picture House, Odeon Kensington, Odeon Marble Arch, Odeon Swiss Cottage, UCI Whiteleys, Virgin Chelsea, Virgin Trocadero. And local cinemas

MY GIANT (PG)

Director: Michael Lehmann

Starring: Billy Crystal, Gheorghe Muresan

Billy Crystal plods his way through Michael "Heathers" Lehmann's Lilliputian comedy about a sleazeball Hollywood agent who gets a few life lessons when he runs into a saintly giant (Gheorghe Muresan) in Romania. Expect size jokes in the middle, and glib morals at the end. Local: Acton Park Royal Warner Village, Edmonton Lee Valley UCI 12, Feltham Cineworld the Movies, Harrow Warner Village

YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS (18)

Director: Neil Labute

Starring: Ben Stiller, Jason Patric

Another troubling X-ray of American mores from In the Company of Men director Neil Labute. Your Friends and Neighbours widens its focus a little, yet in all other respects this looks like a carbon copy of Labute's debut. There are the same stage-bound confines, the same structured misanthropy, the same dense weave of dialogue. Two features in, and Labute has chewed this bone to bits already. West End: Curzon Soho, Gate Notting Hill, Odeon Camden Town, Odeon Swiss Cottage, Renoir, Ritzy Cinema, Screen on Baker Street, Virgin Fulham Road, Virgin Haymarket. And local cinemas