Serendipity (film)
Encyclopedia
Serendipity is a 2001
2001 in film
The year 2001 in film involved some significant events, including the first of the Harry Potter series and also the first of The Lord of the Rings trilogy...

 romantic comedy
Romantic comedy film
Romantic comedy films are films with light-hearted, humorous plotlines, centered on romantic ideals such as that true love is able to surmount most obstacles. One dictionary definition is "a funny movie, play, or television program about a love story that ends happily"...

, starring John Cusack
John Cusack
John Paul Cusack is an American film actor and screenwriter. He has appeared in more than 50 films, including The Journey of Natty Gann, Say Anything..., Grosse Point Blank, The Thin Red Line, Stand by Me, Con Air, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, Serendipity, Runaway Jury, The Ice Harvest,...

 and Kate Beckinsale
Kate Beckinsale
Kathryn Bailey "Kate" Beckinsale is an English actress. After some minor television roles, she made her film debut in Much Ado About Nothing while still a student at Oxford University...

. It was written by Marc Klein and directed by Peter Chelsom
Peter Chelsom
Peter Chelsom is a British actor and film director. He has directed among others such films as Shall We Dance? and Hannah Montana: The Movie...

. The music score is composed by Alan Silvestri
Alan Silvestri
Alan Anthony Silvestri is an American film composer and conductor.-Career:Silvestri is best known for his collaborations with director Robert Zemeckis, having scored Romancing the Stone , the Back to the Future trilogy , Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Death Becomes Her , Forrest Gump , Contact ,...

.

Plot

At the height of the Christmas shopping season in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, Jonathan Trager (John Cusack
John Cusack
John Paul Cusack is an American film actor and screenwriter. He has appeared in more than 50 films, including The Journey of Natty Gann, Say Anything..., Grosse Point Blank, The Thin Red Line, Stand by Me, Con Air, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, Serendipity, Runaway Jury, The Ice Harvest,...

) meets Sara Thomas (Kate Beckinsale
Kate Beckinsale
Kathryn Bailey "Kate" Beckinsale is an English actress. After some minor television roles, she made her film debut in Much Ado About Nothing while still a student at Oxford University...

) as they both try to buy the same pair of black cashmere gloves at Bloomingdale's
Bloomingdale's
Bloomingdale's is an American department store owned by Macy's, Inc. .Bloomingdale's started in 1861 when brothers Joseph and Lyman G. Bloomingdale started selling hoop-skirts in their Ladies Notions' Shop on Manhattan's Lower East Side...

. This scene was re-shot at the end of the filming and is totally different on the DVD version from the theatrical release. You can watch the original version in the deleted scenes of the DVD. Jonathan and Sara feel a mutual attraction, and despite the fact that each is involved in other relationships, they end up eating ice cream at Serendipity 3
Serendipity 3
Serendipity 3, often written Serendipity III, is a restaurant in the Upper East Side of Manhattan founded by Stephen Bruce in 1954. The restaurant has been the scene of several films, including the 2001 romantic comedy Serendipity....

 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 end up in Central Park, where they are ice skating on the Wollman Rink
Wollman Rink
Wollman Skating Rink is a public ice rink in the southern part of Central Park, Manhattan, New York City. The rink was opened in 1949 with funds donated by Kate Wollman who donated $600,000 for the rink to commemorate her entire family from Leavenworth, Kansas)...

 and Jonathan teaches Sara about Cassiopeia
Cassiopeia (constellation)
Cassiopeia is a constellation in the northern sky, named after the vain queen Cassiopeia in Greek mythology, who boasted about her unrivalled beauty. Cassiopea was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century Greek astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations today...

. Jonathan says that freckles on Sara's arm match the pattern of the Cassiopeia constellation. At the end of the night, the two are forced to decide some kind of next step. When the smitten Jonathan suggests an exchange of phone numbers, Sara writes hers down, but it flies away with the wind. Sara is very determined that they should allow fate
Destiny
Destiny or fate refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual...

 to take control of their future. Jonathan begs to have her phone number. 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 used copy of Love in the Time of Cholera
Love in the Time of Cholera
Love in the Time of Cholera is a novel by Nobel Prize winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez first published in the Spanish language during 1985. Alfred A. Knopf published the English translation during 1988...

. If they are meant to be together, she tells him, 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 in a hotel with 28 floors and go 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 when he reaches floor 23. They think they've lost each other forever.

Almost seven years later (ten years in the original film), Jonathan is at an engagement party with his fiancé Halley Buchanan (Bridget Moynahan
Bridget Moynahan
Kathryn Bridget Moynahan , best known as Bridget Moynahan, is an American model and actress. After graduating from Longmeadow High School in 1989, Moynahan pursued a career in modeling. She was signed by a modeling agency, which led her to appear in department store catalogs and the covers of...

). On the same day, Sara comes home to her house to find Lars Hammond (John Corbett), a famous new age musician, proposing to her. As their wedding dates approach, each find themselves with a case of cold feet
Cold feet
Cold feet is apprehension or doubt strong enough to prevent a planned course of action.Cold Feet may also refer to:*Project COLDFEET, a CIA operation in 1962*Cold Feet, UK television series*Cold Feet Cold feet is apprehension or doubt strong enough to prevent a planned course of action.Cold Feet...

, and decide to return to New York in an attempt to find each other again.

Jonathan and his best friend Dean Kansky (Jeremy Piven
Jeremy Piven
Jeremy Samuel Piven is an American film producer and actor best known for his role as Ari Gold in the television series Entourage for which he has won three Emmy Awards as well as several other nominations for Best Supporting Actor....

) return to Bloomingdale's
Bloomingdale's
Bloomingdale's is an American department store owned by Macy's, Inc. .Bloomingdale's started in 1861 when brothers Joseph and Lyman G. Bloomingdale started selling hoop-skirts in their Ladies Notions' Shop on Manhattan's Lower East Side...

 in an attempt to find her name using an account number on the original sales receipt for the gloves. They meet the same salesman (Eugene Levy
Eugene Levy
Eugene Levy, CM is a Canadian actor, comedian, television director, producer, musician, and writer. He is known for his work in Canadian television series, American movies, and television movies. He is the only actor to have appeared in all eight of the American Pie films, as Noah Levenstein...

) and eventually end up with only an address. There they meet a painter Mr. Mignon, who has very little recollection of Sara. However, he does recall that she lived there 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 meanwhile takes her best friend Eve (Molly Shannon
Molly Shannon
Molly Helen Shannon is an American comic actress best known for her work as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1995–2001 and for starring in the films Superstar and Year of the Dog. More recently, she starred in NBC's Kath & Kim from 2008–2009 and on the TBS animated series Neighbors from...

) with her to New York, where she visits the locations of her date, hoping that fate will make Jonathan turn up. At the Waldorf Astoria
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
The Waldorf-Astoria is a luxury hotel in New York. It has been housed in two historic landmark buildings in New York City. The first, designed by architect Henry J. Hardenbergh, was on the Fifth Avenue site of the Empire State Building. The present building at 301 Park Avenue in Manhattan is a...

, Eve bumps into an old friend who is there to get married the next day. The old friend, Halley, invites Eve and Sara to the wedding without anyone realizing the groom is Jonathan. Failing in their search, Sara and Eve console themselves with a coffee at Serendipity. Eve is handed the $5 bill as change, but neither notices anything at the time.

During the wedding rehearsal the day before the big event, Halley hands Jonathan a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera as a groom's gift, having noticed him picking up the book every time they're in a used bookstore. It is the copy that Sara had written in, and he immediately sets off to find her. He gets to the house but sees people in her house being intimate, when it's actually Sara's sister and her boyfriend. Jonathan tells Dean that he wouldn’t have wanted to break off what they have and comes back home for the wedding.

Sara decides not to go to the wedding, and starts to return home. She returns to the Waldorf to retrieve her belongings, where she finds Lars, who followed her to New York. Walking with Lars to Central Park, she sees Cassiopeia
Cassiopeia (constellation)
Cassiopeia is a constellation in the northern sky, named after the vain queen Cassiopeia in Greek mythology, who boasted about her unrivalled beauty. Cassiopea was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century Greek astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations today...

 in the sky, and breaks her engagement with Lars. On the plane the next day, Sara is asked if she wants a headset. To her surprise, she finds her wallet got exchanged with Eve’s. She pays the flight attendant $5 for the headset, and realizes she has the same $5 bill which Jonathan wrote on seven years earlier. Now that she knows his full name, she gets off the plane to search for Jonathan. 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. Eve then gets in a cab to go home while Sara plans to keep looking, later Sara remembers the jacket she left in the park.

The opening scene in which Jonathan and Sara first met at Bloomingdale's was re-shot for the DVD version at the end of production because director Chelsom felt that Cusack and Beckinsale had developed a better chemistry by the end of filming. Chelsom also edited the DVD version to shorten the ten years Sara and Jonathan were apart in the original plot down to seven years.

In the edited ending of the DVD, Jonathan, in the meantime, is wandering around Central Park. He finds Sara's jacket and uses it as a pillow as he lies down. As the first snowflake drops, the other glove floats to him and 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. In the original theatrical version of Serendipity it ended with the camera panning back and rising into the sky from the skating rink as Jonathan and Sara kissed and embraced each other.

Cast

  • John Cusack
    John Cusack
    John Paul Cusack is an American film actor and screenwriter. He has appeared in more than 50 films, including The Journey of Natty Gann, Say Anything..., Grosse Point Blank, The Thin Red Line, Stand by Me, Con Air, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, Serendipity, Runaway Jury, The Ice Harvest,...

     as Jonathan Trager
  • Kate Beckinsale
    Kate Beckinsale
    Kathryn Bailey "Kate" Beckinsale is an English actress. After some minor television roles, she made her film debut in Much Ado About Nothing while still a student at Oxford University...

     as Sara Thomas
  • Molly Shannon
    Molly Shannon
    Molly Helen Shannon is an American comic actress best known for her work as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1995–2001 and for starring in the films Superstar and Year of the Dog. More recently, she starred in NBC's Kath & Kim from 2008–2009 and on the TBS animated series Neighbors from...

     as Eve
  • Bridget Moynahan
    Bridget Moynahan
    Kathryn Bridget Moynahan , best known as Bridget Moynahan, is an American model and actress. After graduating from Longmeadow High School in 1989, Moynahan pursued a career in modeling. She was signed by a modeling agency, which led her to appear in department store catalogs and the covers of...

     as Halley Buchanan
  • Jeremy Piven
    Jeremy Piven
    Jeremy Samuel Piven is an American film producer and actor best known for his role as Ari Gold in the television series Entourage for which he has won three Emmy Awards as well as several other nominations for Best Supporting Actor....

     as Dean Kansky
  • John Corbett as Lars Hammond
  • Eugene Levy
    Eugene Levy
    Eugene Levy, CM is a Canadian actor, comedian, television director, producer, musician, and writer. He is known for his work in Canadian television series, American movies, and television movies. He is the only actor to have appeared in all eight of the American Pie films, as Noah Levenstein...

     as Bloomingdale's Salesman

Soundtrack

  • "Never a Day" - Wood
  • "Moonlight Kiss" - Bap Kennedy
    Bap Kennedy
    Martin "Bap" Kennedy is a singer-songwriter from Belfast, Northern Ireland and older brother of singer Brian Kennedy. He is noted for writing the song "Moonlight Kiss" which was on the soundtrack for the film Serendipity .Kennedy was in a successful band, Energy Orchard for many years and has...

  • "January Rain" - David Gray
    David Gray (musician)
    David Gray is an English singer-songwriter. He released his first studio album in 1993 and received worldwide attention after the release of White Ladder six years later...

  • "Waiting in Vain
    Waiting in Vain
    "Waiting in Vain" is a song written by reggae musician Bob Marley and recorded by Bob Marley & The Wailers, for his 1977 album Exodus. Released as a single, it hit number twenty-seven in the UK Singles Chart.-Annie Lennox version:...

    " - Annie Lennox
    Annie Lennox
    Annie Lennox, OBE , born Ann Lennox, is a Scottish singer-songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving minor success in the late 1970s with The Tourists, with fellow musician David A...

  • "The Distance" - Evan & Jaron
  • "Like Lovers Do" - Heather Nova
    Heather Nova
    Heather Nova, is a Bermudian singer-songwriter and poet. She has released eight full-length albums and has found lasting success in Germany where two of her albums South and Storm have made their way into the Top-5 of German official album chart.-Biography:Heather Nova was born in Bermuda...

  • "When You Know" - Shawn Colvin
    Shawn Colvin
    Shawn Colvin is an American singer-songwriter and musician.-Childhood and early career:Colvin was born in Vermillion, South Dakota. Her formative years were spent in the town of Carbondale, Illinois, where she attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale. She learned to play guitar at the age...

  • "Northern Sky
    Northern Sky
    Northern Sky is a song from Nick Drake's 1970 album Bryter Layter. The song, written in DADGDG tuning, features piano, organ and celesta, performed by former Velvet Underground member, John Cale....

    " - Nick Drake
    Nick Drake
    Nicholas Rodney "Nick" Drake was an English singer-songwriter and musician. Though he is best known for his sombre guitar based songs, Drake was also proficient at piano, clarinet and saxophone...

  • "Cool Yule" - Louis Armstrong
    Louis Armstrong
    Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

  • "This Year" - Chantal Kreviazuk
    Chantal Kreviazuk
    Chantal Jennifer Kreviazuk is a Canadian singer-songwriter of the adult contemporary music genre. She is also a classically trained pianist, and can play the guitar.-Albums:...

  • "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" - Brian Whitman
    Brian Whitman
    Brian David Whitman is an American talk radio host and voice impressionist. Whitman was born on Staten Island, New York and graduated from Wagner College in May 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science....

  • "'83" - John Mayer
    John Mayer (musician)
    John Clayton Mayer is an American pop rock and blues rock musician, singer-songwriter, recording artist, and music producer. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and raised in Fairfield, Connecticut, he attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. He moved to Atlanta in 1997, where he refined his...

  • "Fast Forward" - Alan Silvestri
    Alan Silvestri
    Alan Anthony Silvestri is an American film composer and conductor.-Career:Silvestri is best known for his collaborations with director Robert Zemeckis, having scored Romancing the Stone , the Back to the Future trilogy , Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Death Becomes Her , Forrest Gump , Contact ,...


Not included within the release of the soundtrack
  • "Someone Like You" - Van Morrison
    Van Morrison
    Van Morrison, OBE is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely...

  • "I'm Still in Love" - CoCo Lee
    CoCo Lee
    Coco Lee , born on 17 January 1975, also known by her official English name as Ferren Lee, is a pop singer, songwriter, record producer and actress. Coco started her career in Hong Kong but, after becoming popular in Taiwan, she was widely considered to be a Taiwan artist. She was born to a Chinese...

     (Asian movie theme song)

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
Training Day
Training Day is a 2001 crime drama film directed by Antoine Fuqua, written by David Ayer, starring Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke. The film follows two LAPD narcotics detectives over a 24-hour period in the gang neighborhoods of South and East Los Angeles.The film was a box office success and...

. 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
Hannah Montana: The Movie
Hannah Montana: The Movie is a 2009 Walt Disney Pictures musical comedy film based on the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana which was released on April 10, 2009, by Walt Disney Pictures, it was the second Disney Channel series to have a movie for Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by...

.

See also

  • Serendipity
    Serendipity
    Serendipity means a "happy accident" or "pleasant surprise"; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful without looking for it. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. However, due to its...

  • Missed connection
    Missed connection
    A missed connection is an occurrence where two or more people are unable to exchange contact information or the information that is exchanged is lost. These missed connections are generally associated with romance, but they may also be business-related or otherwise...

    is a term that describes the kind of situation where two people want to reconnect after an initial meeting but do not have the other person's contact details.
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