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Verdict: A sunny but badly scattered gay romantic comedy.

Details: Starring Wendy Crewson and Karyn Dwyer. Unrated, but contains nudity and sexual situations. 1 hour, 43 minutes.

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Review: "Better Than Chocolate" is like a puppy that wants you to pet it and play with it and hug it and squeeze it and pet it again. It's cute and eager, but after a while you want it to calm down or go away.

The Canadian comedy follows the love lives of a group of lesbians connected to a bookstore called Ten Percent. Maggie (Karyn Dwyer) is a recent college dropout who finds love with a sketch artist named Kim (Christina Cox), who moves in. The problem is that Maggie's newly divorced mother, Lila (Wendy Crewson), also moves in, along with Maggie's teenage brother; neither knows that Maggie likes girls.

Along with its coming-out-to-family story, the movie throws in a scad of subplots. There's the bookstore's neurotic owner, Frances (Ann-Marie MacDonald), whose shipments are being seized by authorities on obscenity charges (even a volume of "Little Red Riding Hood"). Then there's the graceful transsexual Judy (Peter Outerbridge), who lusts after Frances and becomes pals with Lila, who remains clueless as to Judy/Jeremy's gender flux. Then uptight Lila discovers the joy of sex toys. And so on.

"Chocolate" wants to be a cousin of "Tales of the City," or a lighter spin on Pedro Almodovar's wacky sex comedies. But screenwriter Peggy Thomson and director Anne Wheeler never decide what the movie is really about. In an attempt to give the sunny, slipshod plot some heft, the script throws in politics and an explosive ending that's more of a sputter. "Chocolate" is hard to actively dislike. But like a puppy, it's sloppy and hyper, and badly needs some discipline.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service

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