Review of Serendipity (2001) by Maria Paz M — 10 Sep 2009

This movie averages out to three stars because half the world's population are realists who find quixotic musings to be an unhealthy waste of time (and in this movie's case, as is hilariously published by Roger Ebert: flat out dumb) and the other half of the population are hopeless romantics who just wanna see what hope looks like when it actually comes to a positive realization even if the stupidity of the plot between the Romeo and Juliette was outlandish. That means half the world's population will give this movie 5 stars for it being romantic and touching and the other half 1 star for being pretentious and unrealistic.

All this time, I thought I was a cynic, but I must say I loved this movie. Maybe because it's filmed mostly in the greatest city in the world, New York City. Because in New York City, stories like this happen all the time. I guess I also love this movie because I love the deep meaning behind the word "serendipidity", a sort of blissful occurence that happens out of a de ja vu like series of mind boggling, spontaneous and even magic-like coincidences.

The cast was wonderful from Eugene Levy's classic character acting geekoid OCD-like personality at Bloomingdales to Jeremy Piven being the awesome-est best man any man could ever have to the wonderful chemistry between John Cusak and Kate Beckinsale.

I think the movie sealed the deal with me because of the expression on Cusak's face when his antagonist of sorts bride to be gave him that book and he was introduced to "Sara" that woman he met 5 years ago who he fell in love with and challenged him to let fate decide if their mutual attraction was truly meant to be.

I agree, that's a dumb thing to do: mess with fate. But I don't care, maybe because it's Kate Beckinsale, I'm thinking with my *insert "Beep!"* instead of my brain.

I think this is also the point in determining whether one likes or dislikes this movie. The dislikers would question, "if you found your soul mate, why the hell would you want to let fate decide if you're meant to be if you clearly ARE meant to be???".

But to me, the foreplay of them trying to find themselves reminds me on various levels of great operas with make the perfect fire of dramatic build up leading to the perfect, shakespearean sort of happy ending reminiscent of Tempest or Midsummer Night's Dream.

Anyways, it was clear that I was sucked into the romantic bliss of this movie. It's always a great cheer up sort of movie along the lines of other similar movies like this, such as "Just Like Heaven.".

Some love this movie, others hate it. I find Rogert Ebert's protest of this movie's annoying "tests" to be hilarious and quite well written and truthful.

In Rogert Ebert's review, he skeptically muses what other dumb tests of fate could they have devised??? I have one!!! How about they both agree to let fate decide if they're meant to be by both geting random lottery ticket numbers, then add up the numbers and text their cell numbers to that random number and see if the text randomly gets to each other!!!

Yes Roger Ebert, I hear yah, but, sometimes, dumb love stories just work. I've seen it twice and I love it and cannot wait to see it again. By the way, the frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity 3 on East 59th Street and 2nd Ave is perfect on a hot New York Summer night (but the wait, normally 1 hour and half plus is ATROCIOUS!!!)....