The film also proffers such a tiresome tale that even its ending, obvious to those who will see only the poster and not the film itself, feels like an embarrassed shrug; it's less a tear-stained, heartwarming finale than a surrender to the stale inevitable.
That the movie is at all tolerable is due in large part to John Cusack, once more cast in the role of the hopeless (or hopeful) romantic who loses his mind when he loses his heart. This is the Cusack of The Sure Thing, Say Anything, and High Fidelity -- the man-child in love with the wrong woman, the tousled hipster driven to distraction by attraction. Cusack, playing an ESPN producer named Jonathan Trager, is days away from marrying his fiancée, Halley (Bridget Moynahan), but obsessed with a woman he met years ago in Bloomingdale's, when the two fought and flirted over a pair of black gloves. Her name was Sara, an expatriated Brit played by Kate Beckinsale (Pearl Harbor), and though both she and Jonathan were involved with others at the time, she beckoned him with gooey talk of fate and destiny. She even took him to her favorite restaurant, named Serendipity, which she kept explaining to him meant "fortunate accident," in case the dolts in the audience don't quite understand the film's title. (Never trust a film that mentions its title repeatedly; it's the Wang Chung theory of criticism.)
Though Sara and Jonathan spent only a few hours together, the two managed to convince themselves they were soul mates, two words that appear in Marc Klein's screenplay more often than punctuation marks. They part but not before Jonathan writes his name and number on a five-dollar bill and Sara inscribes her vitals inside a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera; if the money again lands in her hands or the book in his, they'll know they're destined for each other. It takes only 90 minutes to find out how it ends; if nothing else director Peter Chelsom, responsible for far more idiosyncratic and engaging fare such as Funny Bones, seems keenly aware of how slight a story he's trying to tell.
Sara moves to San Francisco and takes up with a flighty, self-absorbed but ultimately loyal New-Age musician, Lars (John Corbett), who comes off like Zamfir fronting Pearl Jam; we know in an instant they're not meant for each other. Halley, on the other hand, is sweet and endearing; her callous dismissal is not so easily explained, and Chelsom doesn't even try. But this is a film rooted in romantic fantasy; we're meant to laugh at others' foibles and heartbreak. It's too slapsticky to be taken seriously, too saccharine to warrant our sympathies, and too familiar and formulaic to keep our attention. Somewhere in Hollywood, an unmanned computer churns out a dozen scripts like this each day; most merely end up as failed television pilots.
Ultimately little chemistry exists between Cusack and Beckinsale. He's too manic; she's too mild. The most honest relationship is that between Jonathan and the obituary-writing Dean, played by Jeremy Piven, Jonathan's best friend and companion on his quest for true love. Theirs is an unforced friendship: Cusack and Piven grew up in Chicago and on-screen (they've costarred in several films), and they possess a natural union, not one created when a director binds two actors together in a reel of celluloid. Had Jonathan and Dean wound up together, perhaps Serendipity would have become an affair to remember. As it stands, the whole thing's rather forgettable.
