When the audience can see the camera and crane reflected in the glass of a building not once, but twice during a film's opening shot-as is the case in Peter Chelsom's romantic comedy starring the generally reliable John Cusack and rising British star Kate Beckinsale (Pearl Harbor)-warning bells begin to ring. Barring some self-reflexive agenda (and Serendipity is anything but self-reflexive), how could the filmmakers be so careless? This faux pas is just the first of many irksome details that litter the script and execution of this lightweight consideration of the role of fate in our romantic lives.

While shopping for Christmas gifts, Jonathan (Cusack) and Sara (Beckinsale) meet cute over a pair of gloves at Bloomingdale's in New York. After spending an evening talking, skating in the square and generally having a lovely time ignoring the fact that they both have partners, Sara refuses to give Jonathan her name and number, writing it in a copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera instead and telling him that she will deposit it at a used book store of her choosing the next day. He in turn writes his name and number on a five-dollar bill that she promptly gives to a newspaper vendor. Why the shenanigans? Sara is a strong determinist; she genuinely believes that if they are fated to be together, he will find that book (or it will find him) and/or she will come across that five-dollar bill. If either result occurs, she will take it as a definitive sign that they should be together. Yes it is a tad flaky but it's also classic Hollywood high-concept cuteness. (That she is revealed to be a therapist later in the film made me fear for her clients.)

Cut to seven years later-he's about to be married, she's living with a New Age musician in San Francisco (Northern Exposure's John Corbett) and both are still haunted by their evening together. Everywhere they look they see subtle "signs" that remind them of the other. With the help of his buddy, a New York Times writer (Jeremy Piven), and a particularly snarky Bloomingdale's salesman (Eugene Levy), Jonathan makes one last pull-out-all-the-stops attempt to find Sara... It's Hollywood and it's drippingly romantic-do you think he'll find her? If your answer is "no" you've obviously never seen a movie before.

Serendipity holds the dubious if unavoidable distinction of being the first post-September 11th Hollywood movie to have pre-disaster New York as a central character in the script (even though a lot of it was filmed in Toronto). It tries for the pretty-as-a-postcard evocation of New York-parks and bustling streets, horse-drawn carriages and the Waldorf Astoria hotel-and as such comes across as a nostalgic relic from a different age. The leads are both fine, with Beckinsale vastly improving on the wooden performance she gave in Pearl Harbor (perhaps because she's allowed to keep her native British accent) and Cusack doing Cusack, as he does in almost every movie.

In fact, unlike a movie like Maybe Baby which doesn't know whether it's coming or going, Serendipity stays within itself and does not try to be anything more than what it is-a mildly diverting romance with a deeply flawed philosophical underpinning. (The hooey about "signs" and "fate" just doesn't hold up-what happens if, after they get together, a new set of signs start presenting themselves? Follow them and jeopardize the relationship or ignore them and undermine your philosophy? This way lies madness...). It's too bad that Brit director Chelsom (who reveals his roots by using the great Nick Drake on the soundtrack) chooses to keep it cute rather than try for something resembling real emotion. In a Hollywood romance, that would indeed be a serendipitous discovery.