C

The theme of Destined Love is certainly one of the most tired tropes in contemporary cinema, spawning what threatens to become an endless stream of sticky-sweet romantic comedies. They seem to come out every few weeks now, all following the same basic formula, in which a guy and a girl, obviously meant for each other, briefly meet (under ostentatiously cute circumstances), only to separate for some silly reason. Though events conspire against them, they ultimately find their way back to each other, though there are usually complications in the form of new partners or some other apparently insurmountable obstacle. But it’s obligatory that they sweep aside all objections and wind up in each other’s arms: fate decrees a joyous denouement.

This month’s contribution to the genre is even called “Serendipity” to accentuate the fortuitous nature of it all, and anyone who goes to it can’t help but know precisely what to expect. But Peter Chelsom’s picture goes far further than most in hammering home its premise of supposedly magical inevitability. The setup is so totally synthetic that it defies the commonest of sense: gawkily charming Jonathan (John Cusack) and gorgeous, slightly standoffish Sara (Kate Beckinsale) literally bump into one another while Christmas shopping at Bloomingdale’s and spend a few hours in cheerful banter and ice skating in Central Park. At the close of this idyllic encounter (set, it should be noted, in a New York rendered impossibly glamorous in the falling snow), however, Sara declines to give Jonathan her name or number, insisting that they instead test whether their relationship is really destined to flourish in a variety of ways. When the last test fails through a series of unhappy accidents, they go their separate ways, equally disconsolate.

Flash forward several years, and both of them are engaged–not to each other, of course. Jonathan’s about to tie the knot with Halley (Bridget Moynahan), a dark-haired beauty with a killer smile (but not, it should be said, much personality), while Sara–now living in San Francisco–has just received a proposal from a pretentious, self-absorbed New Age musician, Lars (John Corbett). Neither, however, can get the other out of his/her mind, and mad, last-minute searches ensue on both sides. Jonathan puts off his wedding preparations and enlists old buddy Dean (Jeremy Piven) in a frantic effort which eventually takes them to San Francisco, while Sara flies to the Big Apple with her pal Eve (Molly Shannon) to do her sleuthing. From this point the script by Marc Klein piles coincidence upon coincidence, offering up so many misdirections, near-misses, close encounters, miscalculations, chance intrusions and unlikely strokes of fortune that even the most tolerant viewer is likely to groan more than once at the enormous mass of contrivance and manipulation stuffed into a mere ninety minutes: the result is like “An Affair to Remember” squared. And though both principals appear to give up the chase after suffering repeated disappointments, it’s hardly surprising that further bursts of magic intrude to get them together in the end.

By all rights this entirely artificial piece shouldn’t work at all, and its chances of doing so are further decreased by some really clunky bits of business–people fall down or get comically bonked by flying objects far too often, for instance. But “Serendipity” nevertheless comes off better than you have any right to expect. Some of the credit goes to Chelsom, who recovers nicely from the fiasco of “Town and Country” by keeping the increasingly preposterous goings- on moving briskly enough to glide over most of the inanities. He’s helped in sustaining the mood by the absolutely luscious production design of Caroline Hanania; she and her cohorts make New York look like a virtual fairyland, supremely suitable for this sort of Cinderella-Cinderfella bit of malarkey. But all of that wouldn’t matter if the leads didn’t win you over; fortunately, Cusack and Beckinsale prove an extremely engaging pair. The former looks more and more like a young Jimmy Stewart (or, if you prefer, Tom Hanks): his gangly likableness is very winning. Beckinsale matches him in appeal; her turn is nice enough even to make you forgive her for “Pearl Harbor.” There’s fine support from Shannon (in a role Joan Cusack might once have played) and Piven, even though as written their characters smack of sitcom formula. (Shannon is especially impressive, compared with her previous big-screen failures. Piven, unhappily, is saddled with many of the script’s more bathetic speeches, and one bit he has to rattle off–to a clerk played by Leo Fitzpatrick–shows its age rather badly by referring to snot- nosed dot-com millionaires who deserve abuse because of their vast stores of unearned wealth.) Eugene Levy delivers another very funny cameo as an officious, greedy Bloomingdale’s salesman. On the other hand, Corbett and Moynahan are disappointing as our sweethearts’ respective fiances. The latter is merely pallid, while Corbett works Lars’ weirdness much too hard: it’s the sort of overstatement Gig Young always managed to avoid in similar parts in Doris Day comedies.

The good look of “Serendipity” and the chemistry between its leads will be enough to satisfy viewers who responded enthusiastically to such earlier monuments to calculation as “Sleepless in Seattle.” Others, however, will be far less receptive to its combination of whimsy, slapstick, and dreamy romance. I don’t want to suggest that the difference will necessarily depend on your gender, but you probably know which camp you’re likely to fall into.