October 5, 2001 | Like so many other things in life, film criticism isn’t fair. So you shouldn’t be surprised if some of our snippier reviewers toss barbed brickbats at Serendipity, and huffily complain that, this soon after the terrible events of Sept. 11, a glossy romantic comedy set in a dreamily romanticized Manhattan is somehow… somehow… well, dammit, inappropriate.
On the other hand, you don’t have to listen to those gasbags. Leave them to their hyperventilating, and join your friends at the megaplex for the most delightful date movie around right now. You’ll be highly amused, bountifully entertained and – maybe, just maybe – uplifted and reinvigorated. Never mind what the naysayers claim, it’s all right to start falling in love in New York again.
John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale are the stars of this delectable trifle, and you couldn’t ask for more charming company during 90 or so minutes in the dark. He juggles smart-alecky humor and soulful sensitivity with uncommon grace. She is positively radiant, with a tantalizing hint of a young Audrey Hepburn about her. (But, then again, I also thought she was fetching in Pearl Harbor, even when struggling with the clunkiest of dialogue, so I may be prejudiced.) It’s difficult to recall another recent big-screen pairing that so aptly illustrated the phrase “made for each other.”
Jonathan (Cusack) is an ESPN producer, Sara (Beckinsale) is a psychoanalyst – or something like that; the movie isn’t terribly precise – and they meet cute while reaching for the last pair of black cashmere gloves at Bloomingdale’s a few days before Christmas. He’s involved with someone else, and so is she. But they’re sufficiently intrigued to spend a few hours together.
They have dinner in a dessert restaurant named Serendipity. (Hint, hint!) They skate on a Central Park ice rink. They flirt at the Waldorf-Astoria. But, at Sara’s insistence, they go their separate ways at the end of the evening.
“I think fate is behind everything,” she says, explaining why they shouldn’t simply exchange addresses and phone numbers. She offers to write her name and number inside a book – Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, if you have to know – if he writes his name and number on a five-dollar bill. Someday, some way, one of them will find, in a second-hand bookstore or wherever, the necessary info to arrange a reunion. But only, she warns, if they’re truly fated to be a couple.
If, at this point, you find yourself snorting in cynical disbelief, or wondering whether Sara is a serious head case, you might do well to immediately rise from your seat and check out what’s playing in the theater next door. Because, make no mistake about it, the rest of the movie is more of the same unlikely make-believe. A few years pass, Sara and Jonathan go their separate ways. (She winds up in San Francisco, he remains in Manhattan.) Naturally, they become attached to other people. Just as naturally, destiny conspires to bring them teasingly close to each other a few days before each is set to marry the wrong person. Does that sort of thing set your teeth on edge? Then, again, trust me, this isn’t the movie for you.
For the rest of us, Serendipity makes good on its initial promise of airy and engaging feel-good fantasy, delaying the inevitable with seriocomic complications – and a few well-timed missed connections — that are no less amusing for being utterly predictable. French filmmaker Claude Lelouch has made a dozen or so movies with virtually the same premise – And Now, My Love (1975) is the best and best-known – and many U.S. directors (most notably, Nora Ephron) have steered us countless times through this familiar territory. But that’s the great thing about a sure-fire plot: You can make it seem fresh if you strike the right sparks.
Director Peter Chelsom, fully recovered from the drubbing he received for the under-rated Town & Country, wisely emphasizes the wit and romance instead of the clichés and contrivances in Marc Klein’s screenplay. He also makes the most of some well-cast supporting players: Eugene Levy as an oily Bloomingdale’s salesclerk, Jeremy Piven as Jonathan’s sarcastic but supportive buddy and Molly Shannon as Sara’s gangling best friend.
Bridget Moynahan doesn’t have enough to do to make any sort of impression as Halley, Jonathan’s beautiful fiancée, but John Corbett has a couple of hilarious moments as Sara’s fiancé, Lars, a New Agey musician who’s very, very worried about the imagery in his latest video. He can’t decide if the Vikings – don’t ask, it’s too complicated to explain – appear charmed or appalled by his music.
In this sort of comedy, filmmakers often are hard-pressed to find a way for the romantic leads to dump their unsuitable intendeds without seeming unappealingly heartless. The makers of Serendipity shamelessly cheat – they avoid any break-up scene whatsoever. All things considered, that’s probably a smart move. In a fairy tale, it’s never a good idea to acknowledge that some people don’t get to live happily ever after.
