Serendipity

Serendipity Information

Serendipity is a 2001 romantic comedy, starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. It was written by Marc Klein and directed by Peter Chelsom. The music score is composed by Alan Silvestri. The Tamil movie Jay Jay(2003) and the Hindi film Milenge Milenge (2010), were inspired by the film.

Plot

During the Christmas shopping season in New York City, Jonathan Trager (John Cusack) meets Sara Thomas (Kate Beckinsale) as they both try to buy the same pair of black cashmere gloves at Bloomingdale's. They feel a mutual attraction, and despite the fact that each is involved in other relationships, they end up eating ice cream at Serendipity 3 together, and soon exchange goodbyes. However, both realize that they have left something at the ice cream bar, and return only to find each other again.

Considering this to be a stroke of fate, Jonathan and Sara decide to go out on the town together, and ice skate on the Wollman Rink at Central Park. Jonathan teaches Sara about Cassiopeia, saying that the freckles on Sara's arm match the pattern of the Cassiopeia constellation. At the end of the night, the smitten Jonathan suggests an exchange of phone numbers. Sara writes hers down, but it flies away with the wind. Wanting fate to work things out, Sara asks Jonathan to write his name and phone number on a $5 bill, while she writes her name and number on the inside cover of a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. If they are meant to be together, he will find the book and she will find the $5 bill, and they will find their way back to each other. Jonathan is not satisfied with this so they go into a hotel with 28 floors and enter into different elevators to see if they both choose the same floor. They each take a single glove from the pair they purchased. They both press floor 23, but a child gets on the elevator with Jonathan and presses all the buttons, so it is too late by the time he reaches floor 23. The two believe they've lost each other forever.

Several years later, Jonathan is at an engagement party with his fiancé Halley Buchanan (Bridget Moynahan). On the same day, in San Francisco, Sara comes home to find Lars Hammond (John Corbett), a famous musician, proposing to her. As their wedding dates approach, each find themselves with a case of cold feet, and decide to return to New York in an attempt to find each other again.

Jonathan returns to Bloomingdale's in an attempt to find Sara. He meets a salesman (Eugene Levy) and eventually with the help of the salesman and Jonathan's best friend Dean Kansky (Jeremy Piven) Jonathan ends up with only an address. After additional research, Jonathan and Dean meet an artist who recalls that Sara lived with him for a short time after being referred by a placement company, which he identifies as being located in a shop next to Serendipity 3. Jonathan and Dean follow the lead to find that the agency has moved and its former location is now a bridal shop. Jonathan takes this as a sign that he is supposed to stop looking for Sara, and get married to Halley.

Sara takes her best friend Eve (Molly Shannon) with her to New York, where she visits the locations of her date, hoping that fate will bring back Jonathan. Celebrating Eve's birthday, Sara and Eve console themselves with a visit to Serendipity. Eve is handed the $5 bill as change. At the Waldorf Astoria, Eve bumps into an old friend--Halley--who is there to get married the next day. Halley invites Eve and Sara to the wedding without anyone realizing the groom is Jonathan. Sara returns to her hotel room, where she finds Lars, who followed her to New York. While with Lars, she sees Cassiopeia in the sky, and breaks her engagement with him.

The night before their wedding, Halley hands Jonathan a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera as a gift, having noticed him picking up the book every time they're in a bookstore. It is the copy that Sara had written in, and he immediately sets off to find her. He sees people in her house being intimate, when it's actually Sara's sister and her boyfriend. Jonathan then comes back home for the wedding.

Sara decides not to attend the wedding, and starts to return home. On the plane, Sara finds that her wallet got exchanged with Eve's. She realizes she has the same $5 bill which Jonathan wrote on several years earlier, and gets off the plane to search for him. His neighbors tell her he's getting married the same day. She rushes to the hotel, only to see a man, apparently cleaning up at the end of the ceremony. She is in tears until the man says the wedding was called off. Sara later remembers she left her jacket in the park.

Jonathan is wandering around Central Park. He finds Sara's jacket and uses it as a pillow to lie down. As the first snowflake drops, he sees Sara. They introduce themselves to each other formally for the first time. The film concludes with Sara and Jonathan at Bloomingdale's, enjoying champagne on their anniversary at the same spot where they first met.

Cast

John Cusack as Jonathan Trager
Kate Beckinsale as Sara Thomas
Molly Shannon as Eve
Bridget Moynahan as Halley Buchanan
Jeremy Piven as Dean Kansky
John Corbett as Lars Hammond
Eugene Levy as Bloomingdale's Salesman (Macall Polay)

Soundtrack

"Never a Day" - Wood
"Moonlight Kiss" - Bap Kennedy
"January Rain" - David Gray
"Waiting in Vain" - Annie Lennox
"The Distance" - Evan & Jaron
"Like Lovers Do" - Heather Nova
"When You Know" - Shawn Colvin
"Northern Sky" - Nick Drake
"Cool Yule" - Louis Armstrong
"This Year" - Chantal Kreviazuk
"(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" - Brian Whitman
"'83" - John Mayer
"Fast Forward" - Alan Silvestri
"From Rusholme With Love" - Mint Royale

Not included within the release of the soundtrack

"Someone Like You" - Van Morrison
"I'm Still in Love" - CoCo Lee (Asian movie theme song)
"Rose Rouge" - St. Germain

Box office

The film has grossed $US75,294,136. It opened at #2 at the U.S. box office raking in $US13,309,241 in its opening weekend, behind Training Day. With an estimated budget of $US28 million, this was the first of Peter Chelsom's films to turn a profit. After some of the biggest commercial failures of all time, Serendipity marked the first of several box-office successes for Chelsom, peaking in 2009 with Hannah Montana: The Movie.