Chocolat is, as the title suggests, warm and sweet. Sort of like a stray Milk Dud that's fused itself to the inside of your pants pocket over the course of a week. It is also, like that same Milk Dud, irresistible.

Juliette Binoche plays Vianne, a woman who, with her daughter, wanders into a mysterious French town where everyone speaks English. She has come to open a chocolaterie, which is a shop which sells cellophane and ribbon, often wrapped around chocolate. Vianne has an uncanny knack for guessing people's favorite chocolate, and also for prescribing sweets with curative properties. She helps a local dude woo an old widow, she gives a housewife some nuggets that put the ardor back into her husband's larder, and she helps bring an old woman (Judi Dench) and her psychopathic grandson together over cups of hot chocolate. She also rescues the mousy Josephine (Lena Olin) from under the thumb of her abusive husband (Peter Stormare).

Unfortunately, this is a real conservative town she's living in, and the mayor Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina), thinks she's quite possibly the devil incarnate. It didn't help that she opened her chocolaterie during Lent (an odd business decision in that mostly Catholic town). He badmouths her to the locals and determines to see her shut down. Fortunately for the business, an intrepid assortment of village sinners are willing to frequent her establishment and reap the benefits of her Mayan voodoo.

So it's the religious nuts vs. the hedonists. The stakes heat up when a gang of river nomads floats into town and Vianne strikes up a friendship with Roux (the always welcome Johnny Depp). If this town doesn't like chocolateries, it sure as hell doesn't like floating nomads. Will the forces of repression win out over the forces of freedom? Or will this stuffed shirt of a town find it's inner chocoholic and let everyone live happily, albeit pimply, ever after?

Chocolat provides some good laughs, credible romance, and a nicely balanced story, presenting it's villain, Reynaud, as a moral man who is genuinely trying to do the right thing. He's just got an over-developed sense of propriety. And he's got that whole "God" fixiation, which is a real problem. Vianne, on the other hand, is pure atheist. Her religion is chocolate. Alas, she may just be a bit too magical for a lead character, but what the hell--the movies need a little more magic. I guess.

Chocolat is one of those pictures where you can't help but leave the theatre with a smile on your face, and feeling hungry. Me, I went and got a Twix bar after. I reckon you will too.