The events of "The Prince of Tides" play out in such a fashion that one tends to forget how soapy and melodramatic they really are. What begins as one man's emotional awakening to the events of his past in an attempt to help his sibling generates into a run-of-the-mill romance easily found in the pages of any Harlequin novel. And yet, through acting zeal and its abidance by the rules of tearjerkers, this film actually pays off in a weird sort of way.