"Okay, if my pulse is over 85, that means we're meant to be together."

Serendipity is a sweet-natured romantic comedy, destined to not become a classic.

It’s the story of Jonathan and Sara, two New Yorkers who meet one snowy, December evening as they’re both Christmas shopping. Though they’re each involved with other people, they spend a few hours together and there’s an obvious attraction. Jonathan wants to pursue the relationship further, but Sara decides to leave it up to fate. (One could argue that perhaps fate had done enough by having them reach for the same pair of gloves at the same moment, but whatever.) He writes his name and number on a five-dollar bill, which she uses to buy a pack of mints; she writes hers in a book, which she promises to sell to a used bookseller the next day. If they’re meant to meet again, she reasons, he’ll find the book or the bill will make its way back to her.

Years pass and they don’t meet again. Sara moves to San Francisco. They both get engaged. But when the hours until Jonathan’s wedding have dwindled down to double digits, fate finally decides to step in again. Jonathan starts to hear the name “Sara” all over the place, including from an over-enthusiastic Hall and Oates fan. Sara sees a poster for Cool Hand Luke, Jonathan’s favorite movie. They each decide that they need to make one last-ditch effort to find each other, just to get it out of their systems. Through detective work, hunches and happenstance they circle ever closer to each other until finally . . . well, I’m sure you can spoil the ending for yourself.

"I'm sure I filed those notes on character motivation here somewhere."

What bothered me about the movie was the shallowness of its characters. I never felt like I got to know Sara and Jon, or understand why they were so captivated with each other that they would throw away their current relationships, which seemed perfectly fine. Well, yes, obviously those relationships weren’t fine or they wouldn’t have been chasing each other down, but . . . why? What was wrong with them? We never know. Aside from the fact that Sara’s fiancé is a Yanni-like New Age musician, which would be annoying but she knew that going in.

Compare this with my personal benchmark for romantic comedy, When Harry Met Sally. In that movie, we not only get to know our two leads, we get to know them several times, at different stages in their lives. It’s a credit to screenwriter Nora Ephron that by the end of the movie, we understand who these people are and why they should be together.

Jeremy Piven tries to stop John Cusack from rushing into America's Sweethearts 2.

But I would have to argue that the real love story here is between Cusack and Piven. They have a natural chemistry and their scenes are both the funniest and the most poignant of the film. The rest of the time, the movie skates by on plot devices and charm, and I have to think they could have done better than that.

Gorilla Pants rating: 2 out of 4 bananas