Tarzan

This latest incarnation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' jungle aristocrat allows him to move like a quadruped. That's an improvement on Johnny Weissmuller who swam like a fish and walked on two legs.

Accuracy is hardly top of the must-do list, however. John Greystoke's parents are killed in a helicopter crash after discovering a meteorite in the heart of darkness that has alien properties, capable of solving the world's energy probs in a nanominute, which leaves their three-year-old son in the foster care of gorillas.

The animation is of The Polar Express super realistic variety which does not excuse Tarzan's pumped up, gym fashioned physique. He can leap from vine to branch like Spider-Man, but having young Arnie's body is a tad ludicrous.

He talks in ape grunts until Jane turns up and then learns man language in a couple of hours and can say, "Me Tarzan, you Jane" by the time of their second date.

She is a piece of work, as if transported, complete with Piper Perabo's smile, from a Santa Barbara shopping mall.

Her dad is one of those absent minded boffin types (Epic, Rio 2) who is both green and ineffectual, used as political window dressing to help big business disguise its capitalist greed (Avatar) behind environmental lip service.

This 21st century Tarzan may trigger the urges of a Californian teenager but he's native fodder when it comes to exploiting the virgin forest, like his ape family, only a bullet away from extinction.

The plot proceeds along a familiar track with the imagination of a tree slug. Thrills are relegated to the been-there-survived-that fingertip dangle from cliff tops, never so exciting in animated form where everything is possible. Also, the humour is of the kindergarten gorilla strain, all cutesy and furry.

Disney's 1999 Tarzan was more traditional and less lumpish, but nowhere near the delights of How To Train Your Dragon, or Brave.

Rice Burroughs created the concept of a wild man tamed by woman but forgot to include a template for future interpretations.