'Serendipity' Pretty Good Chick Flick For Guys

So things aren't looking too promising. For one thing, it's opening night of hockey season, and I'm off to see a chick flick.

And I mean a full-blown, Sleepy In My Seat, kissy-face love story, with previews that look about as appealing as those things where Tom Hanks makes smarmy, lovesick grins at Meg Ryan all night -- akin in my entertainment book to having teeth pulled with razor wire.

Plus, I've just watched a new TV show set in a college dorm where two guys end up hitting each other really hard after watching "You've Got Mail" -- a timely reminder that there are other people out there who wish Nora Ephron would zip it. Forever.

So the signs are all there. And they all say that "Serendipity," the new romantic comedy starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale, isn't looking like a bit of whimsical good fortune in my day.

Well, here's a fortuitous, unusual twist of fate: this lovey-dovey thing isn't half-bad, with a cheeky sense of humor that makes it just this side of sticky-sweet.

Cusack and Beckinsale meet in a flurry of excitement one Christmas-shopping day in New York, but kiss-me-miss-me-Kate decides their perfect flirtation is only meant to go anywhere if fate brings them together again. No phone numbers exchanged, only clues sent into the ether that have roughly a snowflake's chance in hell of being tracked down.

So years pass and both are lurching toward matrimony with other people when they renew the mad search, one last gasp to confirm whether they're making a huge cosmic mistake. This sets up a scramble through an hour or so of near-misses and wacky coincidences as they try to find each other again.

All very safe stuff, and not exactly original. Will boy find girl? Oh, grow up, we're not talking cliffhanger here. But first-time screenwriter Mark Klein and director Peter Chelsom manage to make this patently safe formula a satisfying experience.

Part of "Serendipity's" success is its clearheaded referencing of old Cary Grant-era screwball comedies, right down to the use of familiar urban-comedy icons like Bloomingdale's and Central Park. (You have to discount the unintentional angst of seeking out whether the World Trade Center is in a few shots, but let's stick with the fantasy.)

But mostly what works in this simple, unfussy little treat are the likable characters who inhabit it. Cusack is in laid-back, winning form (more or less playing himself, which always seems to work), and Beckinsale has an easy grace if not the same degree of comic ability.

Jeremy Piven (the fast-talking wisecrack artist of TV's briefly enjoyed "Cupid," Eugene Levy and Molly Shannon all help lighten things up too, as does "Northern Exposure's" John Corbett as a slightly creepy New Age musician, whom Beckinsale is about to wed if he can put down his exotic little flute thing long enough.

Sweetness and light eventually swarm over this story, and of course we're treated (or is that subjected?) to a blissfully happy ending. But getting there, in this case, is much more than half the fun.

Not to mention: the movie was short enough that I still caught the end of the hockey game. Serendipity indeed.