"Actor: Steve Mittleman"

• Roxanne | DVD | (24/01/2000) from £8.39   |  Saving you £-2.40 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  In 1987, almost 100 years after its first production, the romantic story of Cyrano de Bergerac found new life in a winsome film written by Steve Martin. Roxanne updates the tale with a smart 80s' spin, yet writer-star Martin stays close to the old-fashioned heart of the matter. He plays a small-town fireman named CD Bales, whose otherwise unremarkable existence is crowned by an amazingly long nose. He falls for the world's most beautiful astronomer (Daryl Hannah), but he is embarrassed by the size of his proboscis and prefers to stay on the sidelines. Like Cyrano, the shy CD instead helps a handsome friend (Rick Rossovich) woo the fair lady by providing flowery sentiments and soulful poetry. Not only does the story still work, but director Fred Schepisi captures a dreamy grace in his visual design for the film (some of which will be lost without the widescreen format). Set in Washington State, but filmed in the hilly ski resort of Nelson, British Columbia, the location seems like a fairy-tale town, nearly as unreal as Steve Martin's nose. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com

• The Out Of Towners | DVD | (05/03/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  This remake of Neil Simon's l970 comedy finds Goldie Hawn and Steve Martin as Ohio yokels cast adrift in Mayor Rudy Giuliani's sanitised New York City. With their son recently departed for Britain, the empty-nesters travel to the Big Apple for a job interview and are beset with all kinds of bad luck, starting with their flight being rerouted to Boston. Things only go downhill from there, of course, as they're mugged by an Andrew Lloyd Webber imposter, the high-tech multilingual navigation system on their rented Cadillac goes haywire, and their hotel reservations fall through. Although marred by some out-of-place slapstick and mawkish romance scenes, this film's not without its funny moments. The couple stumbles into a sexual-addiction encounter group and has to try to back out gracefully (not succeeding very well, of course). John Cleese is howlingly funny as he reprises his Fawlty Towers role of a cross-dressing hotelier, and Martin has a great drug-delirium scene, in which he's slipped a hit of LSD in jail (thinking it's aspirin). Just try not to think in terms of comparisons to Neil Simon's original and this remake works fairly well. --Jerry Renshaw, Amazon.com