Serendipity

Directed by Peter Chelsom, Serendipity follows John Cusack’s Jonathan and Kate Beckinsale’s Sara as they meet-cute in a department store but decide to leave their potential coupling up to chance – with the bulk of the movie detailing the characters’ subsequent efforts at finding one another before they marry other people. It’s a somewhat absurd premise that’s employed to pervasively affable and flat-out delightful effect by Chelsom, as the filmmaker, working from Marc Klein’s screenplay, delivers a briskly-paced romantic comedy that features a whole host of agreeable, compelling elements – with, especially, the captivatingly charismatic efforts of stars Cusack and Beckinsale, as well as their palpable chemistry together, going a long way towards cementing the movie’s compulsively watchable atmosphere. (It’s clear, too, that Chelsom elicits strong work from such periphery players as Molly Shannon, Jeremy Piven, and Eugene Levy, with the latter’s frequently hilarious turn as a grudgingly helpful salesman certainly standing as a highlight.) It’s consequently easy enough to overlook the picture’s few missteps, to be sure, and there’s little doubt, as well, that the thoroughly romantic finale ensures that the whole thing concludes on a deeply satisfying note – which ultimately cements Serendipity‘s place as a top-tier romcom that boasts an appealingly timeless quality.

***1/2 out of ****

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