Serendipity is a pretty lame romantic comedy that’s a staple of cable reruns, where I had the misfortune of running into it this morning. 
Like Bollywood, it peddles soft-headed romantic fatalism in a one-joke script.
It does, however, do a very funny New Age parody. John Corbett (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) hams it up as Lars, a self-absorbed New Age musician. This schmuck in a silk kurta plays an instrument ubiquitous at Indian weddings while his hype men play tabla and sitar.
As Lars watches the cheesy, Yanni-like music video his record label put together, he complains, ‘You can’t fight off an army of bloodthirsty Vikings with a shehnai. It’s illogical.’
This little fudge cake of brilliance is probably the only shehnai joke in Hollywood history, and definitely the only one involving Vikings.
I liked that movie you jerk.
It seems like I was not the only loser watching on TBS this afternoon around 11!!
I knew TBS had to be the culprit…
It was on late last night too!! Yayyy we’re all losers!
I liked that movie you jerk.
My condolences.
Oddly, the fact that we were all hapless viewers of this cable staple at the exact same time is the exact opposite of serendipity. Now that’s irony (and if it’s not irony, then this is)
what is it with guys and that movie?
my 20 year old brother loves it…
i think it’s okay but it’s not that great…
is it the john cussack thing? or the fact that there’s a hot girl?
what’s the deal?
“is it the john cussack thing? or the fact that there’s a hot girl?”
both. because, every guy wants to be John Cussack and be with Kate Beckinsale. the latter reason is more important.
Manish,
who gives a sh** about the movie? and those prada bags.
between airplane inflight movies and HBO, I seen that movie half a dozen times – only for Kate Beckinsale.
Well at the very least you have to admit it has a killer soundtrack. Annie Lennox does Marley and David Grey has a nice instrumental.
You all are scaring me. I’ve never seen this movie, and it wasn’t until you mentioned the stars that I could even identify it …
Clearly you don’t watch enough bad TV.
The only thing I remember about Serendipity was that it was the first movie I saw in a theater after 9/11, and they had digitally removed the Twin Towers from the NYC skyline in the opening shot. It looked so sad and empty, and even though we were in Chicago, there was this big murmur in the audience.
don’t know if you remember… but one night in Bangkok you-i-we watched them (director + cast), shoot a scene from this film.
Love that dude from Sex and the City. He’s such a cute white boy 🙂
True. Of all the Nick Drake ghazals they managed to find one to play in the background when they re-unite; Northern Sky is a lovely song.
Another Kate.B + late night guilt pleasure = ‘Shooting Fish’. Or am I alone on this one?
damn you Manish! 😀
I just recommended watching this movie to someone I know this morning.
Abhi’s right.. It’s got a killer Soundtrack.
Other good things abt the movie: The ice skating sequence with Bap Kenneddy’s Moonlight Kiss background score.. Kate Beckinsale looks incredible. Cusack is tolerable. Eugene Levy was funny.
Perfect Hollywood masala fillum. Wht’s wrong with it?
cringes gulity pleasures? depserate illsuions of fancy?
i’ll take the last song in Deh Shiva Bar Mohe. 😉
Kate B also looks very good in Van Helsing and Underworld (especially the former)…..
arggh… the best part of the movie? tis not kate, tis not john, tis not anything else..but….
of course, the frozen hot choco from serendipity…
heck when i was in nyc a few weeks ago we waited hours to get inside to taste it…
yummy..can we say heavenly? 🙂 that and dylans candy store… willy wonka heaven
If Willy Wonka was real and had a hot son my age, I would totally marry him for his inheritance of chocolate and chocolate-making secrets. Off-topic? Yes, of course. But Contracts class has just started and I am sooo not in the mood to discuss rescission of contracts when there’s a material breach and would much rather fantasize about chocolate and Willy Wonka’s hot son (or grandson, whoever’s closer to me in age and single).
I actually paid to see this movie when it came out…clearly, I have phenomenal taste. Actually, I thought it was pretty weak for a movie theater movie, but for a tv movie it’s perfectly fine. Kate B is disgustingly pretty (I hate that) and John Cusack is cute enough. I always see all the chick flicks: I feel that I must do this. I blame the patriarchy and all those stupid romance novels I read in junior high.
Seriously, Mr. Sex and the City Aidan specializes in touchy feely New Age guy, ever since that Alaska show from the nineties where he played the DJ? Whatwasthatagain? Northern Exposure?
I agree with you on this being a great movie for TV over the big screen. I’m actually not into “chick flicks” all that much, but I really do enjoy watching this movie when it’s on – despite not being a huge fan of Kate B. I think it’s John Cusack that does it for me.
Not me, I want to be Gene Hackman and give Superman fits. Curtis Jackson comes in a close second…
I loved that show!! Yes, he has been typecast as the nice guy, though.
And seriously, Carrie is bordering on vacuous-brain-syndrome in choosing mr. big over Aidan (esp. since he cut his hair). Dirty old confused cheesy busines man (albeit rich, but who cares?) over sexy (after he cut his hair), sweet, sensitive and soulful (and makes furniture from his very hands – perhaps the best point)? Please.
“I want to be Gene Hackman”
Me too and beat up the English Bob.
“is it the john cussack thing? or the fact that there’s a hot girl? what’s the deal?”
Oh come on it’s neither John Cussack nor Beckinsale! It’s the romantic horseshit all girls have been fed…somewhere out there there is a ‘perfect person’ just for you. Nevermind that you ditched the person who’s been with you thru thick and thin @ the altar!
I want to be Gene Simmons 🙂 (and I hate his music)
Mr. Big’s totally hotter than Aidan. Aidan’s a wuss, and Mr. Big’s the badass playboy who realizes at the end that Carrie’s his one true love and makes all of the shit he put her through worth it for her. It’s every girl’s fantasy, innit.
Mr. Big is fantasy. Aidan is reality. So, in the tv show I have to say, go with Mr. Big. In real life, Aidan, for sure.
Yes, this is eye-rolling comment-fare, but I cannot stop myself. It’s a disease. Seriously, the only other show I have watched as much as Sex and the City is Absolutely Fabulous. Now, if some genious brain could meld the two….
You know, Carrie is the female equivalent of Big, so I’d say the commitment-phobes deserve each other!
Ummm… didn’t Aidan pick a fist fight with Big and broke his nose in one episode?
M. Nam
I thought the last show for SATC was well done, but give me a break. Ooh, he lets me call him by his name now. I was really hoping Carrie would end up single. I dislike the implication of the show’s ending that although these 4 really smart, really successful women found such good relationships with each other, there just can’t be a story book ending for any of them without a man. ALL OF THEM found a man by the end, even Carrie, although Big is a big smarmy jerk. (I really liked the 3 guys the other girls ended up with though.) How cliche. And what a message: I can put up with YEARS of bullshit and abuse from the rich smooth guy, and maybe he’ll change!
(Sorry. That ending was so annoying, and it killed me that all my friends were so happy that Big and Carrie ended up together.)
P.S. MD, I loved your FFFs re: Chicago.
that’s it. i’m officially the only person who never got into Sex and the City.
i’m some sort of freak for my generation arent i?
Thanks for supporting me on this one, Rupa and Moor Nam (your expertise in this area is surprising, Moor!)
Yes, that “everybody’s hunky dory” was my problem with the last show, too. They must have used a stupid focus group (ha ha) for how the show should end.
Carrie and Big will cheat on each other in the reunion – stats would indicate this scenario probable.
was there too, i was there too! IT IS SERENDIPITY (a sanskrit-derived word no less). but i hate the movie.
Actually, a Farsi word for Sri Lanka.
They had to end the series like that – I mean come on, who DIDN’T predict that she’d end up with Big? The whole thing was that the ending DOES tend to be the fantasy of many women. “Oh, he’ll change…” You (the average lady viewer of SATC) have this show that you and your girlfriends love watching and are always commenting on the insightfulness of, feeling like you can relate to it. You know how it feels to chase after and be stuck on the guy who doesn’t reciprocate the effort of- the guy that you’d screw over the nice guy for. Oh man, the same thing happened to Carrie?? Really?? And then gasp, he does change?! She gets to end up with him?!
…. did you really think they’d end the series any other way? They had to give the ladies hope.
I wasn’t saying that I’d have stuck with Big, (I don’t have patience for that sh*t), but it doesn’t mean I can’t think he’s hot.
Let me guess, you love watching “The Apprentice” too. Only thing worst than alpha-males and the women who love them are the wannabes.
Hmm, interesting comments all!
Personally, I take SATC as a cautionary tale and as a comedy…..don’t take these court jesters too seriously 🙂 They are there to amuse, and to point out what not to do, in many instances.
I’m sure there are many men (and women) reading all these comments thinking: ugh! Women. Come on. Someone had to go there…..
**Thanks Rupa!
Seriously, did those women ever work? Every detail about life is dissected, and curiously, little about work. Work is such an important part of people’s lives. Okay, we saw them at work, and we saw conflicts at work, usually related to dating, but did any of it sound plausible? No complaining about bosses or late nights or can’t meet the girls for brunch cause I have to work? I do not recognize these so-called liberated women. I kept thinking that there are not enough hours in the day to work and play like they do….were they all trust fund types or what?
It was an entertaining show, but its appeal was always a little more subversive that its glossy ipstick exterior. It offered advice, very easy advice, to tickle the canker sores on our souls. Heartbreak is indeed universal, and we’d listen to just about anybody that can glam up our neurotic pains, which themselves covered the incompleteness of our melancholy. Always lurking beyond the maelstrom of good natured outrage at the war between the sexes, was the void of the old romanticism which the show always hewed towards, despite all it’s exasperated huffing. The final episode was so blatant, that in retrsopect it seems like the worst kept secret in the world as to how it would all end.
Wow, this must be a really slow news day. haha
Well, the sanksrit etymology is Swarna (Gold) + Dweep (Island), based on the old characterization of Sri Lanka as the land of Gold. It may have been transmitted to Europe through Farsi.
OMFG,
I was watching that same movie too, at the same time.
I think my brain mass was reduced by, like, 27%.
(but I did think the shehnai joke was pretty funny).
“I was really hoping Carrie would end up single. I dislike the implication of the show’s ending that although these 4 really smart, really successful women found such good relationships with each other, there just can’t be a story book ending for any of them without a man…..How cliche. And what a message: I can put up with YEARS of bullshit and abuse from the rich smooth guy, and maybe he’ll change!”
Rupa a woman who understands my angst and has my name!! You rock. I feel the same. What crap. Nurse a jerk long enough and he’ll come around. NOT. But Carrie was a jerk to Aiden and perhaps she deserved a jerk herself. Damn that show, it’s been over forever, I’ve already gone thru withdrawal over it and someone always sucks me into the SATC vortex!!!
that’s it. i’m officially the only person who never got into Sex and the City.
i’m some sort of freak for my generation arent i?
no. because there’s two of us! i was watching re-runs of 60’s and 70’s shows trying avoid that kinda stuff. 😉
Right back atcha, SupaRupa!
As a guy, and therefore from a male point of view, let me fill you ladies in one what the SATC foursome were “doing wrong”, at least from my own perspective:
However, I did think that the depiction of the various arguments and fallings-out Carrie had with Big was the best part of the show — very realistic sometimes and often completely spot-on (especially the final, screaming argument they had on the street when Carrie is shouting at him “You and me — nothing !! “).
gujjubhai gets a gold star…. the persian route is actually a corruption of the sanskrit sinhaladvipa, meaning “island where lions dwell” …from that sinhala/sinhalese, the main sri lankan tounge