Review: Serendipity

Eyes will roll, hearts will melt; just in time for Christmas.

Serendipity
Photo: Miramax Films

Silly Brit Sarah (Kate Beckinsale) bumps into dopey New Yorker Jonathan (John Cusack) over a pair of black cashmere gloves and shares her thoughts on destiny over a cup of coffee. Sparks fly though Sarah advises they remain loyal to their significant others. At 90 minutes, Serendipity is perhaps too efficient for its own deus ex machina. Sarah is way too fond of chance, scribbling her contact info on a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera while he scribbles his on a five dollar bill. Only in Hollywood do memento moris boomerang with such precision. For Sarah, if they “return to sender” then they are definitely meant to be. Years later, Sarah is a San Francisco psychiatrist seemingly disillusioned by her own philosophy. In New York, Jonathan begins to see imprints of Sarah everywhere. Both are set to marry (she to a singer more whole-grain than John Tesh, he to a beautiful tell-me-I’m-the-one putz) though their respective bouts of the jitters give way to a last-ditch search for higher love. The Gabriel Garcia Marquez tome and the five-spot exchange hands with “darn, you just missed him” care. The fluffy Serendipity may nauseate (Jonathan sees Casiopia in Sarah’s freckles) but its naïveté is more than appeased by snowy backdrops and hysterical supporting players (Eugene Levy and Molly Shannon). Eyes will roll, hearts will melt; just in time for Christmas.

Score: 
 Cast: John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale, Molly Shannon, Jeremy Piven, Bridget Moynahan, Eugene Levy  Director: Peter Chelsom  Screenwriter: Peter Chelsom  Distributor: Miramax Films  Running Time: 90 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2001  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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