Columnist Geoff Carter: ‘Serendipity’: One of life’s happy accidents

Geoff Carter

Friday, Oct. 5, 2001 | 8:08 a.m.

Geoff Carter's movie reviews appear Fridays in the Sun and vegas.com. Reach him at geoff.carter@vegas.com.

Alot of people, critics and moviegoers alike, are going to miss "Serendipity." Critics will miss its charm by unnecessarily playing up its New York backdrop (even New Yorkers don't want to think of themselves as living in a tomb, and rightfully so). The moviegoing public will miss it because of its awful trailer, which makes the film look like saccharine "America's Sweethearts"-variety tripe.

I can't do anything about my fellow critics -- short of spitting in their beers at openings, which I do anyway -- but I can tell you that "Serendipity" is worth your eight bucks. Truth be told, knowing what I know now, I'd pay 16.

"Serendipity" is a guileless, big-hearted and intelligent romantic comedy of a variety you just don't see anymore. It skirts the pitfalls currently endemic to such films -- idiotic soon-to-be cuckolds, orgasm humor, Nora Ephron -- and delivers as pure and funny a romance as any I've enjoyed.

Jonathan (John Cusack) and Sarah (Kate Beckinsale) meet in New York one Christmas, making a simultaneous grab for Bloomingdale's last pair of black suede gloves. The chemistry between the characters -- and the actors -- gels almost immediately. Cusack plays his now-expected dysfunctional romantic with a calm and dignity we haven't seen him use since "Say Anything" (much as I love watching him pitch one of his comic fits, they were in danger of becoming a gimmick). Beckinsale is quick-witted and radiant, the polar opposite of her labored turn in "Pearl Harbor."

They seem a lock for each other, but Sarah's belief in predestination doesn't allow her to trust her instincts when Jonathan's phone number flutters away in a sudden wind. Stunned, she submits the two of them to a series of tests meant to determine if the fates are with them; she has him write his phone number on a $5 bill -- which is promptly spent -- and she writes her name and number in a copy of "Love in the Time of Cholera," which she sells in a used bookstore the following day.

Needless to say, events conspire to keep them apart, and several years later both are wondering if they missed something important. To give away any more details would be a cheat, save these: There are a number of logical near-misses, there are two would-be spouses who are stronger than they seem, and Eugene Levy plays the funniest department store employee in film history.

Director Peter Chelsom made the unfortunate "Town and Country," but he also made "The Mighty," an overlooked family film that asks the same question that Jeremy Piven asks near the end of "Serendipity": "When a man died, the ancient Greeks asked just one question: Did he have passion?"

Chelsom obviously does, and in "Serendipity," he has made a film about the great rush of life, not the desperation fueled by fear of death. And New York looks absolutely great -- like a careworn, but not weary soul that's passionate about both its past and its future.