Serendipity: Review By B. Alan Orange

(Happy Birthday, Mom!)

I met my soul mate two years ago. She was a malicious young woman, constantly coming with a handful of playground sand right into my eye. She'd hurl it out of spite. Shelby was disappointed with God's placement of her destiny, especially the role I played in it. A self-masochist, she went on with this charade for a spell. I was allowed the gentle touch of her holding my elbow in times of crisis, followed by an occasional bottom-lip-only kiss on the forehead during the holiday season. Yes, it was true love. The only kind I'd ever know. Unable to hack the agreement, Shelby left our little self-contained party with absolutely no remorse. It came with a painful punch to the chest, bruising my heart with a purple indentation of her fist; knuckles huge from cracking them each and every day. The girl soon married Schnitzy L. Fredrickson, heir to the Fredrickson Shopping Cart Empire. He sold his share of the stock, leaving Mrs. Fredrickson to hit the Spook Show circuit in Alabama.

Still befuddled with the aspect of me being her one and only, Shelby took a job at Disneyland portraying Snow White at the gates of Sleeping Beauty's castle. Some might say she's better suited to the role of Snow Queen. I'd agree. She truly, deeply hurt me inside. I strongly urge you to pelt the girl with eggs upon your next visit to that self-proclaimed "happiest place on earth." Please, gleefully knock that bitch from her throne atop the Electric Light Parade. It's my secret dream to watch her drown in the contaminated waters of It's A Small World. 94% of the population believe they have a soul mate. 100% of me believes I got screwed. Watching Serendipity made me very angry. John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale are destined for each other. These two idiots know this, but they force themselves through years of misery and have to contend with a rush game of catch-up in the fading moments of their imminent life together. My own fate was a mess from the get go. Theirs didn't have to be. Think of all that hug-time they missed out on; shame on them.

It's the girl's fault, really. This is another example of the female taking things into her own intertwined hands, totally screwing key plot points in the opposite direction. In a villain-less movie, she is the hidden criminal. Sara Thomas steals moments from Jonathan Trager's life; her only concern locked in achieving self-happiness at the end of the day. Maybe "girl-as-oppressor" is a popular theme because these movies are written and directed by men. If you go back and look at When Harry Met Sally or You've Got Mail, movies trapped in the same Serendipity fence, you'll see that the Male and Female characters are at equal fault in provoking the "fail-to-get-together." Both of those movies were written by Nora Ephron, who seems less willing than her male counterparts to blame the opposite sex.

The problem lies within Beckinsale's Sara Thomas, a twenty-something obsessed with the idea of fate. She wants to believe in a laid-out plan of pure destiny, yet fails to understand the concept with an attitude that is maddening. In her own mind, she takes every little misstep as a sign, failing to realize that she's the one self-invoking these missteps. She has the unique ability to read too much into any given moment. Sara wants to rule what cannot be ruled, and comes to understand this only after it's too late.

She meets Cusack's Trager and likes him immediately. She knows, as he does, that they should continue developing a relationship. John wants to go full-steam ahead, Sara wants to play games. In the girl's first move of complete stupidity, she decides to write her name on an object and send it out into the World, telling John that if it comes back to him, they are meant to be together, locked in legs and heartveins forever. He is to do the same. A typewriter contrivance actually sees this happening, possibly by an author who failed at coaxing over his own concept of fate.

The possibility of Cusack actually retrieving the book Beckinsale has written her number in is slim, while the reappearance of John's five dollar bill is all but impossible. Unless it's been saved in some kid's bank, this cash-money would have been half-way around the country or called back into the depository well before Kate caught hold of it. How come we don't see the Molly Shannon character receiving this fin in change while still traipsing San Francisco? That idea is a little more plausibly sparked. Here, Sara has taken the definition of serendipity and rewritten it to her own liking, though her first action is miniscule when compared to the film's biggest blunder: The Elevator.

Kate tells John to get in an elevator and push a button, she'll do the same. If they choose the same number and land on the same floor, their impending liaison is written in the stars; possibly the exact stars that appear in a formation of freckles on Kate's forearm. They do, in fact, pick the exact button (of course, 23. 23, if you didn't know, is the number that holds the universe together). It is fate. Silly Kate doesn't take into account other people getting on John's elevator. She sits in front of the elevator and can see what floor the thing is attempting to achieve. She should have some clue that the elevator is going to hit more floors as their corresponding buttons light up. She fails at accepting the time-ordinance in this venture. Even though the girl knows Cusack will try to hit every floor in a means to find her, she tires of waiting. Sara Thomas is a woman of little patience, and as a result, misses out on a central part of her life. This whole movie is an unnecessary exercise in frustration. You almost have to take pity on Cusack's sad sack of a character. I was left asking, "Why? Why does it have to be like this?"

Serendipity tries really hard to be boring. It stops just short by throwing a few oddities out in the open, surely intended for another movie. Some things stand in the forefront, almost making you forget you're watching a try-hard Meg Ryan throwback. The best thing about its inner-mechanics is the appearance of Eugene Levy. This guy is having a resurgence unseen thus far in his career. From the minute he shows up as a Bloomingdale Glove Salesman, you know he's going to deliver what has been missing all along: A few strong laughs. He is the sh*t, leaving everything else to stink. Let's hope there's more of him on the supplemental section of the DVD.

We also snag a strange milieu in Sara's boyfriend. Lars Hammond is a flute-toting musician in the Eastern Indian flavor of an ass-backwards Yanni. He watches his new video, critiquing it with the director. It's a scene so strange; I thought I'd fallen into one of those half-sleep dreams that come when you slowly fade in and out of consciousness due to the hypnotic sway of the screen. Then there's that guy in the golf ball body costume. I'm telling you, the screenwriter must have been bored to tears with his own material.

I almost ran for cover when I saw the name Molly Shannon in the credits. Jesus, is she the most annoying presence on the face of the earth, or what? She always comes at your face with claws, skittering about in intense hyperactivity that hits at annoying. I've never seen her attempt another persona. Until now. The girl shows a lot of restraint here, flying in under the radar with a smoothed out approached. It's still not appealing, but it is almost watchable. There are moments when you can physically see her trying to break the cell she's locked her disposition into. It's obviously painful: That poor girl.

Dare I mention the requisite "other" boyfriend and girlfriend of our main characters? Does anyone ever care about them? No, in every one of these movies, they're discarded without feeling. Where's their movie? That's what I want to see.

I've made a lot out of my joy in seeing throwbacks to that golden age of cinema, when films were stupid and fun. This should be one of those movies, and it tries hard to realize said emotions. I'd like to recommend it, but the sheer idiocy of its two leads becomes so teeth-grindingly infuriating, I wanted them to fail in reaching that final kiss. They deserve to be separated for the rest of this life. Let them find each other in the next one. Maybe by then, they'll have grown an inch or two. A lifetime apart is the only way to make these two people appreciate a few hours together. If you're out there, and you see your soul mate, don't f*ck with fate's timeline. It's bad karma. You'll end up lying in pools of dewed up cement, just like Jonathan Trager. Trust me on this. I know.