| Movie Review of "Serendipity" The thing about romantic comedies, for me, is that I can only watch so many of them in one lifetime. Back in the heyday of yesteryear, when I never used the word �fundamentally� in everyday conversation and people around me used to comment on how cute I was, in the same tone that they would use to describe a baby dolphin, I remember being quite taken by the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan movie �Sleepless In Seattle�. I recall how I was rooting for the two of them to finally get together and, ahem, get it on. And I walked out of the theatre then, feeling really good about the world, that happiness gets you in the end and we�re all searching for that one soulmate. Fast forward to today. Take a look around the contents of this webpage, people. There�s a new dawg in town. Now, nothing annoys me more than watching trailers of romantic comedies (since I never end up watching those movies) featuring teenagers whose names I have never heard of and quite simply forget after five milliseconds. Voiceover in Movie Trailer : Two people. Destined to fall in love. Will it be with each other? Joseph Giggerman. Marilyn Matromoley. In �Life Without You�, coming this spring to cinemas everywhere. Friend : Man, that Marilyn Matromoley is one fit babe. Me : Marilyn Metropolis? Who�s that? If it makes any of you feel better, I made those names up. You�re not that old. That�s not to say that I will watch any rom-com that does not feature 25-year-olds pretending they are teenagers spewing tacky lines like �You�re like the sugar in my coffee. You bring sweetness into my life� (pause to vomit). I just plainly detest them nowadays. Partly, this has to do with the fact that half of the rom-coms released every year invariably feature the cloyingly saccharine Meg Ryan, who is not particularly attractive, not a particularly good actress and really not particularly attractive. Yet she commands something like US$15 million for each movie she does. She has a new movie coming out soon, called �Kate and Leopold�, in which she falls in love with someone from the 19th century. The movie takes place in 2001, by the way. I would sooner have a root canal on my birthday than watch a movie with a concept like that. And so, I surprised even myself when I queued up for a ticket to �Serendipity�. Now, you have to understand that just about the most difficult thing about this movie is pronouncing the title at the ticket counter. In other words, it�s a standard rom-com gig, nothing remarkably mind-boggling, plot-wise. I mean, sure, all rom-coms are different in one way or another. You can have rom-coms between two people who meet in a horse farm, a horse-riding school, or the horse exhibit at the zoo, and call it three different movies. �Serendipity� stars John Cusack and the ravishingly delici- I mean, beautiful Kate Beckinsale, whom I recently found out is an alumnus of my university (though I believe Hollywood called her name with a loudspeaker and she never graduated). Basically, it�s how John and Kate meet cute one day while shopping for the same pair of black gloves in Bloomingdale�s and then leave it to fate to decide if they are to be together again. Kate is the person who believes in serendipity (please check your dictionary for the meaning, I have enough problems typing it as it is). So after a perfect night-out in New York City (in all its romantic splendour, I have to say), Kate gets John to write his name and number on a five-dollar bill and immediately sets it into circulation by buying a pack of mints. She then writes her name and number on the inside cover of a book (�Love In The Time Of Cholera� by Gabriel Garcia Marquez) and says she will sell the book to a used-book store the next day. If somehow the book lands with John and the dollar-bill with Kate one day, then destiny has it that they are meant for each other. And so begins the comedy part when several years later, they are both with their significant others and are about to take the plunge into marriage. They still cannot forget that wintry night in New York, and so go about on a final search. Contrivance, um, I mean, obstacles lay in their way, and they are always seconds away from meeting each other. I shall leave it up to you, my esteemed reader, to deduce whether they finally get together in the end. Look, who am I kidding, I went to see this movie because of Kate Beckinsale. She is pretty, she is damn good-looking, and I will even raise my hand now and admit that I watched �Pearl Harbor�. But the truth is that, halfway, I became taken by the city. Yes, New York City. I wasn�t actively looking for the World Trade Centre towers because I feel it�s ridiculous to try and spot it and then snigger about whether it�s left in or left out. But the director gave us such a romantic re-creation of New York City and its wintry atmosphere that you almost feel the drift of soft snow floating in from the screen. Perhaps I�m biased. I�ll pretty much watch anything with Kate Beckinsale in it, she could bloody well be clipping her toenails while reading French poetry aloud, but I have also always been fascinated by the city that is New York. Its people, its round-the-clock activity, Staten Island Ferry, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Harlem, Times Square, the clear-cut seasons (yes, living in England teaches you that much). I�ve seen so much of it in films and TV, yet I�ve never actually been there. At the end of the movie, it wasn�t so much that I cared deeply whether John and Kate got together or not. I was just taken in and mesmerised by the whole evocation of that romantic (not in the lovey-dovey sense), feel-good mood of two people falling in love in the beautiful part of New York City. And as I walked out of the theatre that night into the biting cold, I felt somewhat good about the world, that happiness is falling in love in New York and my soulmate is Kate Beckinsale. It just felt good. Fundamentally. R.D.�s Rating : Kate Beckinsale. John Cusack. Fundamentally. PUPPY DAWG love. What plan does "Serendipity" have for them? (What does PUPPY DAWG mean? Check out R.D.�s rating system here.) Sound off!! Are you from New York City and willing to shelter me for a couple of weeks in the summer while I find my own Kate Beckinsale? Are you Kate Beckinsale? Can you say �Serendipity� ten times fast without tripping over your tongue? Hang on, did you actually see John Cusack in the movie? Tell me all about it here. |