An Affair To Forget

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Doing their Christmas shopping, Jonathan (John Cusack) and Sara (Kate Beckinsale) meet in Bloomingdales. They simultaneously grab for the last pair of black gloves on display. This leads to a magical New York City evening--ice cream, ice skating, faux-intimate cross talk. When they part, he writes his phone number on a $5 bill; she places hers in a used book that she promises to sell. If fate means for them to be together, these clues will circulate back to one or the other of them, she says.

The years pass; each becomes engaged to an inappropriate person. Their short time together sweetly haunts them. They start looking for each other in all the wrong places, helped and hindered by various friends and strangers. But, rather obviously, Serendipity would be pointless if boy and girl did not reunite in the end. And you, in the audience, are likely to grow restive with the many contrivances--some funny, some not--that endlessly frustrate that foreordained conclusion.

On the other hand, Cusack is an actor of real charm. There's something watchful and soulful about him, a reluctance to go for easy, farcical frenzy that is most attractive. And Beckinsale, having survived the Pearl Harbor disaster, is all better now, both perky and mysterious. They have agreeable best pals (Jeremy Piven and Molly Shannon). Eugene Levy does a nice turn as a fussy store clerk, and one doesn't feel particularly sorry for the drippy fiances (Bridget Moynahan and John Corbett), who exist mainly to be dumped and whose roles define the word thankless. Peter Chelsom's direction is conventionally pretty--and an improvement on his grim Town & Country.

Coitus lengthily interrupted has long been a romantic-comedy staple, and though Serendipity is a little vague about exactly how many years Jonathan and Kate tote their torches around with them, they are many. And the two make recent ventures into this territory (Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail) look hasty. Your affection for Serendipity may depend on how fascinated you are by a movie that is apparently going after the all-time record for delayed consummation.

--R.S.