Call me an insensitive cad, if you must, but as I watched this, I kept this thinking of something one of my teachers said about Shakespeare in Love referring to it as Weinstein's blockbuster for ladies. Chocolat is a little bit of the same... because it is also produced by the Big Ws. There's romance. Conflict. It's a little silly. Toss a bunch of doofy metaphors around. You got feelings all over the place. But there's some nicely talented actors keeping it all together. It's a blockbuster, ya know? If there's something that makes it a little more digestible to my palate it's that there's a fable/storybook quality to it. It allows for a cartoonishness of what's going on to seep through... you know, magic chocolate changing a stuffy town into a less stuffy town (and a sad Alfred Molina to a happy Alfred Molina). AND LET ME JUST SAY. I love watching Alfred Molina. He's great. He's especially great when he's making faces with a mustache on his upper lip. I can say with all confidence that he's my favorite part of this movie. I dunno, I went into it thinking it was going to be some dull, hyper-European meditation on love with chocolate as a metaphor. Instead, it was a goofy run of the mill blockbuster fable with Peter Stormare and Judi Dench. That ain't bad!
Get outta here, Alfred Molina! And take your frown with you!
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