"Serendipity:" making fortunate discoveries by accident. The film of the same name plays up this aspect of Jonathan Trager's and Sara Thomas's relationship ... over and over again. The couple tests fate in cute ways and romantic gestures, but they undergo so many fortunate mishaps that by the end of the movie the audience will be thinking, "Can they just get together already?" "Serendipity" definitely pushes all the appropriate romantic comedy buttons; it just holds them down a bit too long.
The magic all starts on a blustery, snowy New York evening (typical) when Jon and Sara meet over the last pair of black cashmere gloves. After some flirty looks and witty banter, Jon concedes to let Sara have the gloves in return for dinner at a little restaurant Sara knows named (oh my gosh, whatever could it be?) Serendipity.
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Jonathan, the slightly more sane of the two, decides he would like to get to know Sara better and asks for her phone number, leading her into an overstated speech about the workings of fate (for those viewers who did not catch the theme of the movie from the first 20 clues). She then sets up a series of elaborate attempts to challenge this notion of destiny. She buys a book, puts her name in the inside cover and sells it to a used book store in hopes that one day Jon will find it. Similarly, Jon writes his name on a five-dollar bill and Sara spends it, on the chance that it will once again make it into her hands. The two miss each other, leaving the night to disappear into the tragic "love that could never be" category.
The movie then zooms forward 10 years to the present time, when Jon and Sara are both engaged to other people. Both feel like they may have missed out on true love with one another and go on desperate journeys to find each other. The second half of the movie devotes its time to an even longer series of built-up coincidences that assure the characters and the audience that fate exists.
John Cusack as Jonathan is the adorable, average Joe that he plays so well, charming and befuddled, aware of how crazy he is as he pulls his wacky stunts. Kate Beckinsale, last seen as a solemn World War II nurse in "Pearl Harbor," embraces her British daffiness as hopeless romantic Sara, and it is hard to not get taken in simply by her overwhelming beauty and glowing smile. There are also some amusing supporting characters in the film. Molly Shannon plays Sara's best friend Eve, supportive but nutty, and while some of her "SNL"-like antics seem slightly out of place in a film that tries so hard to be heart-warming, they will at least make the viewer smile. And Eugene Levy of "American Pie" fame knocks out yet another hilariously funny cameo as a department store salesman.
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Despite the talent that stars in the film, all of the brilliant acting in the world could not make "Serendipity" the moving portrait it so wants to be, for the fault of the movie lies in the plot's lack of originality. It plays like a modified version of "Sleepless in Seattle," with all of the romantic gestures, whispers of fate and optimistic characters, but with twice as many forlorn sighs and backwards glances. The film itself is a clich
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