Serendipity (2001)

Tagline:
Destiny with a sense of humor.

Wide Release Date:
October 5, 2001

Directed by:
Peter Chelsom
Written by:
Marc Klein
Produced by:
Peter Abrams, Simon Fields, Robert L. Levy

Starring:
John Cusack
Kate Beckinsale
Molly Shannon
Jeremy Piven
Bridget Moynahan
Eugene Levy

PREGAME THOUGHTS

I was looking to see if Say Anything was streaming anywhere for free, and it wasn’t, so I decided upon this cheesy romantic comedy from 2001 starring a not-that-handsome tired-looking John Cusack who Kate Beckinsale goes nuts over, apparently. Let’s see how it turns out.

THE 750(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

It’s Christmastime in New York City, and Jonathan (John Cusack) and Sara (Kate Beckinsale) meet each other at Bloomingdale’s while trying to buy the same pair of gloves. After exchanging some fuck-me eyes, they go grab dessert at a place called Serendipity 3 EVEN THOUGH they are both in “happy” relationships! How shitty is that shit? After dessert, the cavort around an ice rink. They discuss serendipitous circumstances as justification for allowing fate to bring them together, and even though Jonathan is like “no we should really just start boning each other”, Sara wants to play around with this fate idea for some reason. Let this single evening be a one-off event, and let fate decide if they are meant to see each other again.

She has Jonathan write his name and number on a $5 bill, and she writes her own name and number inside the cover of a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. She gets one of the gloves, he gets the other glove, and she has another wild idea to go into a hotel together — the Waldorf Astoria — and enter separate elevators. If they both pick the same destination floor, they were meant to be together anyway! Well, this plan backfires because, although they both pick Floor 23, a kid in Jonathan’s elevator fucks it all up by pressing a bunch of random buttons. Sara thinks it was a failure and leaves the hotel before Jonathan can catch up to her. Too bad so sad.

Jeremy Piven’s in this movie?? Go fuck a duck.

An unidentified number of years later — let’s just call it 76 — Jonathan is engaged to a woman named Halley (Bridget Moynahan) and Sara is in San Francisco engaged to some reprehensible new age hippie musician Lars (John Corbett). Things seem to be going swimmingly for them even though they both keep making slightly despondent faces about their respective situations once in a while. Every time Jonathan sees a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera he picks it up to check for a phone number. At some point, Jonathan finds the glove that he hasn’t held in his hands for years and decides to fuck off into the city with his best man Dean (Jeremy Piven), like, the night before the wedding, in order to try to find Sara. Sara, meanwhile, becomes disheartened by Lars’ planning of his world tour and decides to fuck off to New York City with her best friend Eve (Molly Shannon) in order to try to find Jonathan. Jonathan tries to find records of her last known address in the city courtesy of a very salty salesman played by Eugene Levy. Sara just kind of runs around a lot. They almost cross paths about 25 times. Eventually, Eve convinces Sara to give up the chase while sharing dessert at the Serendipity 3. Eve pays and gets THE, yes THE, $5 bill as change, which she promptly puts in her wallet unseen…

Sometimes when I get nervous, I stick my fingers under my arms. And I smell it like that.

Back at the Waldorf Astoria where Sara and Eve are staying, they run into Halley who, by chance, was an old college roommate of Eve’s! Halley invites the two to the wedding rehearsal dinner. Eve accepts while Sara declines.

Jonathan had hopelessly given up his search and shows up at the rehearsal a completely distracted man. Halley is all like “bro do you even want to marry me?” and Jonathan is all like “oh yeah uh yeah”. Halley gifts Jonathan with a copy of Life in the Time of Cholera because “he spends so much time looking through the book in bookstores and libraries”, which is the saddest fucking thing about the movie to me. It is THE copy…

After having gotten hers and Eve’s wallets mixed up, Sara discovers THE $5 dollar on her return flight to San Francisco just before takeoff. She calls, she gets Jonathan’s address, the superintendent of the building informs her of the wedding at the Waldorf Astoria, and she books it there to find that the wedding had been canceled.

Jonathan, fresh as a daisy from a morning of breaking up with his fiancée on the day of his wedding, wanders New York and returns to the same ice rink that he and Sara shared an evening at years ago. Like an enormous butthole, he lies down in the middle of it while people are trying to skate on it. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a glove falls from the sky and lands on his chest! The matching glove! They have found each other at last!

*puke*

They kiss, and years later they celebrate their anniversary at Bloomingdale’s where Eugene Levy is still salty. I’m salty too. Movie is over.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — General Movie Thoughts

Man, I’ve got a lot of problems with this one! What’s the message with Serendipity? Meet each other in a department store, have one semi-inappropriate date that evening even though you’re both in a relationship, and spend the next not insignificant number of years pining over each other to the point where they are barely engaging themselves in their own real relationships, and then spend the day before your wedding running around town looking for the person you hung out with for only three hours because, deep down, you just want to get your bone on? Sounds incredibly healthy to me!

I think the movie is romantic on a barely-scraping-the-surface level. It’s a nice thought to meet who you think is the love of your life one evening out of chance, and then forget about them for seven years until you realize you want to find them again. And then find them. And then they live happier ever after. BUT LET’S LOOK AT THIS LOGICALLY! First of all, John Cusack? Really? Someone like Kate Beckinsale is falling all over the pinchy-mouthed, saggy John Cusack? What year was this again, 2001? They should’ve gotten Gweneth Paltrow and made it a lesbian love affair instead, honestly.

Hey buddy. I’m still single, you know.

So who’s the bigger asshole here? John Cusack, who canceled his wedding that very morning, who spent the night before his wedding chasing a woman around and looking for her address and phone number, who spent the better part of several years thumbing through Love in the Time of Cholera hoping to find his ticket to contacting Kate Beckinsale? John Cusack, whose bride-to-be thoughtfully gifted him with a copy of the book because he’s always picking it up and looking through it? Or is it Kate Beckinsale, who’s engaged to the ugly guy from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, who decided to fly to New York on a whim to chase down a guy she barely met years earlier? Is this supposed to be romantic? Spending a good chunk of your real relationship pining over bullshit? No thanks.

These people seem wholly uninteresting, too. Just the most bland couple in movie history. No wonder they’re made for each other.

TOPIC 2 — Enough Said

This movie is so shallow that there is no Topic 2. Move on.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Kate Beckinsale and Molly Shannon disagreed with using stunt doubles and performed their own stunts.
What, like running and laughing and talking? Those kinds of death-defying stunts? Eating and sitting? Amazing.

Following the destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, images of the World Trade Center towers were digitally removed from all skyline shots of New York City.
I remember when this was a thing. You can thank George W. Bush for such a high level of retconning.

John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale filmed only a few days together during the shoot, much like their characters saw each other only for a limited time.
HOW INTERESTING! I heard that Cusack tried to feel Beckinsale up and she hit him with a frying pan. Then he tripped and fell and broke 17 teeth. I don’t know what this has to do with anything, it’s just a thing I heard for real.

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

Absolutely not. John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale have no personality, although they do admittedly have a bit of chemistry. The message that cheating is justifiable because of fate is hollow and romanticized. The only good part is Eugene Levy. Watch it for four minutes of Eugene Levy if you’re hard up for entertainment, I guess.