Chocolat

Rating:
Summary: Something About Faux French Sets My Teeth On Edge
Review: A sweet story, based on a better novel. This falls in that food meets sex and gets blurry genre that the Nigella Lawson crowd loves so well. The actors and actresses are cute, the locations lovely, Judy Dench rules the world, the food bits quite tasty to watch and the story moves along nicely.

I think the thing that gets me about it is that it is supposed to be French, but it is so Americanized that I found myself wondering if they filmed it in Disneyland. Also, the pat, happy ending is very American.

I await the fusillade of negative votes from people who liked the movie. Fire away mes amis!

Rating:
Summary: A Magical Movie For Me and You!
Review: CHOCOLAT is a movie that warms the heart. It has a mystical feeling about it that is generated by the incredible performance of Juliette Binoche (Wuthering Heights, Blue) and the fictional village where her character creates a chocolate shop of magic in a small European town.

It has warmth about the relationship of a strained mother and daughter who spend their time moving from town to town trying to set up shop. A Chocolate shop it was directed by Lasse Hallstrom (The Shipping News, The Cider House Rules) who masterfully makes you, the audience, a part of this film. From the evil towns would be "Mayor" to the towns very own "Mistress" - it has something for everyone to talk about.

This film is soft to the touch and has an incredible amount of humor in it. Including the concept that chocolate is an aphrodisiac. They play that to the hilt. Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hallow) plays the love interest who is the stranger from out of town who is also the bad boy. There is a woman in the story cleverly played by Judy Dench (Shakespeare In Love, Elizabeth, the 4 James Bond movies) who is old and doing everything she isn't supposed and teaches the lessons of life, love and enjoying yourself. It comes at a high price for her in the end.

The story is fun energetic and it is photographed extremely well. It was a charm about it that makes you want chocolate but more, importantly, want to enjoy it to its fullest. The DVD extras include a really good commentary and real detailed documentary on making this fictional town seem very real. This is a good film for the whole family. It has a good simple story and a lot of passion. Just a good feeling type of film...

Rating:
Summary: Terminally cute
Review: Good commercial for chocolate though did chocolate ever need any kind of commercial? As PHONY, COY & PRETENTIOUS AS a Sunday NY Times spread, chic clothes & makeup & sets & scenery. PLUS some of the WORST ACTING I've ever seen on film. And by the way, did you think the scene showing a dog lopping up chocolate kisses off the floor was funny? Try it on your dog if you want to put him or her down. Very NOW: i.e. decadent stuff.

Rating:
Summary: A delightful movie
Review: I highly recommend this movie to anyone who likes stories about independent spirited women, not to mention Johnny Depp! He was wonderful in this movie, as was everyone else. The unique characters were delightful and it's a refreshing movie. This one woman touches so many lives, even the lives of those that try to avoid her. She changes their lives for the better, whether they wanted it or not! Just a joy to watch.

Rating:
Summary: beyond empty moralism
Review: Here is a movie that, in a just world, should have won best picture. Alas, we live in a cynical and spiritually impoverished world. For all of its sentimentalism and flaws, I have fallen in love with the irreverent heart of "Chocolat."

I knew I'd probably like this movie even before I saw it. Three of its stars: Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, and Johnny Depp all have a talent for picking projects that I end up liking. They do not disappoint here. Binoche shines, Dench grouses her way into the viewer's heart, and Depp is his usual personable self.

The unexpected gems (acting-wise) here are: Molina--who steals this film as the uptight Comte; Carrie-Anne Moss--as stunning a beauty as I have seen..who manages to hit just the right mixture of restraint and empathy; and Lena Olin--whose character undergoes one of the most wonderfully hopeful transformations in the movie (she brings it off flawlessly).

I love how this movie gives the lie to empty, external, even religious moralism. The message of "don't" and "no" has never done anything but twist the soul of humanity. The resolution of this wonderful fable, particularly Pere Henri's final speech presents us with something truly inspiring to think on.

Exclusion always pales before embrace, Love conquers judgment, and a light shines in the darkness.

The DVD special features are outstanding for a single disc. I particularly enjoy the stirring of Chocolate effect while they load.

I give this movie my full recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: The joy of life.....
Review: "God who made the world and everything in it...does not live in shrines..." Acts 17:24.

The small French village where Vianne (Juliette Binoche) and her daughter (Victoire Thivisol) come to live (delivered by the clever north wind) has been ruled by strict and narrow convention for a long time. The local count (Alfred Molino) is the powerful mayor who "helps" the priest write sermons critical of actions eschewing denial of the flesh. The town's unhappy people live in fear of their neighbor's censure, their god's wrath, and happiness in any form. "Right" action rules. Sunday mass in the town's cathedral is a mixture of furtive unruly behavior and external show.

But Vianne is a force to be reckoned with. The daughter of a French pharmacist who traveled abroad and met and married her mystical mother in Latin America, Vianne understands the magical properties of natural substances properly mixed and administered. Soon Vianne opens a shop where she concocts chocolate confections to minister to any need-physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. Chocolate--elixir for the gods and one of nature's wonders is her main ingredient, although others such as selected chili peppers play a part.

As if things weren't strained enough by the arrival of Vianne and her tempting sweets, the poor mayor soon encounters a "gang" of river rats who descend on his doorstep one fine day. These Irish travelers are led by Roux (Johnny Depp), a pig-tailed, charming young man who is musically gifted. Vianne and Roux soon stir up all sorts of excitement for the town's inhabitants and destroy the straight-jacket "tranquility" of the little village.

I waited to see CHOCOLAT until I could buy the DVD, and it was worth the wait. My granddaughters and I have watched CHOCOLAT several times. We love this film with it's fine cast of characters including the wonderful English actors Judi Dench and John Wood, as well as Leslie Caron with whom I fell in love when I was a little girl and she played LILI in the 1950s film.

Judi Dench is well known, and John Wood less so, but he frequently plays character actors and is very recognizable. He and Alfred Molino played parts in LADYHAWKE, where Molino was Cesar the man who hunted wolves, and Wood the wicked bishop. Rounding out the stellar crew is Lasse Hallstrom the director, who proved in MY LIFE AS A DOG and THE SHIPPING NEWS that he can elicit marvelous performances from children. Victorire Thivisol played PONETTE a few years ago and she remains a wonderful young actress.

CHOCOLAT is a magical film that reminds me that life is about living.

Rating:
Summary: As a self-proclaimed hater of chick flicks, I actually......
Review: ....liked this one. Why? Simple, it focuses on a story rather than the chemistry between two characters.

It's a delightful tale about the ability to see things differently, even if you have to rub your eyes a little for it to occur. Do not lisent to Jerry Falwell or his band of self-made film critics; this film is hardly a "sex-driven" film. It has absolutely NO NUDITY and some of the classiest sexual innuendos ever developed. The films sexual humor is the same type of humor that you'd see your parents teasing each other about in the kitchen. In other words, it's harmless.

Give Chocolat a chance and be sure to buy some real chocolates later on. Wink wink.

Rating:
Summary: Really a nice story
Review: Juliette Binoche make the moive so good i like her and in this film she was great , also when she make the chocolat in the film that make you wanna test it , with a good cast in the film so all together will give you a nice moive i hope you injon it

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing...
Review: Whilst it promises to be a high-quality feel-good movie, "Chocolat" cannot escape the emotional and socio-political stereotypes which have become so common in current film making. Juliette Binoche plays a rather smug, ostracised single mother who arrives in a provincial French village and opens a cuter-than-cute, better-than-perfect chocolate shop. Her arrival is treated with great suspicion by the locals, particularly the church and the mayor but along the way she manages to establish a limited women-only clientelle. The arrival on the scene of Johnny Depp as the love-interest adds further fuel to the rather structured plot.

The predictable and frequently turgid storyline is supported by flat and unspectacular performances, particularly Binoche, and a singular lack of chemistry between any of the characters. The overall characterisations are very polarised; all the men are against our heroine; all the women are for her. In even simpler terms, all the men are essentially evil except for Johnny Depp, whose token good-guy-in-bad-guy's-clothing character is no fault of his own. Depp and Judi Dench do their best with what they have but Depp, in particular, has almost nothing to work with because his character is so shallow.

The underlying philosophical point of this film centering around a chocolate shop seems to be that ancient customs and beliefs were superior to modern ones and that indulgence in chocolate is the key to true happiness and enlightenment. It is very easy to be critical of recent attitudes; indeed it has become fashionable, but it does not mean that the ways of ancient civilizations (particularly superficial ones) were necessarilly superior to ours. In this aspect the film resolves nothing and as a viewer, I would prefer not to be lectured to.

Overall, I found this film very disappointing and there are far better, less indulgent, feel-good films around. One could be excused for thinking that, with its killer cast, it would be much better than it is. It gets two stars for cinematography and loses everything else for cornball cliches and crude stereotypes.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful movie with an original plot
Review: This is a wonderful movie with a very original plot. It shows the prejudices of a small and narrow-minded community towards anything that comes from the outside. The local aristocrat rules over the village as a feudalist landlord. The opening of the chocolaterie comes into this - to say the least - conservative setting like thunder and lightening. Obviously, the landlord immediately sets out for maintaining desperately the social and moral status quo undermined now by the exotic owner of the chocolate shop.

You cannot better show to what results prejudices and sudden judgements can lead. Wonderful. I would recommend this film to everybody who is interested in the display of various characters and their interactions. All the characters are wonderfully played.

I liked especially the young priest dancing to Elvis' tunes while working in the garden. Just wonderful.