By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * )
Sara Thomas and Jon Trager meet while fighting for the same pair of gloves in Bloomingdale's department store. They feel strong attraction at first sight. They go out for hot chocolate.
They find out each is dating somebody else. They separate. They go back to
the store. They meet again. He wants her phone number. But no, she says, they must leave themselves in the hands of fate. If they are meant to meet again, they will.
Jon (John Cusack), Sara (Kate Beckinsale) and the audience are put through an hour and a half of far-fetched dramatic and romantic situations to find not whether they want or should be together, but whether they can pass enough self-imposed tests to get there.
Some years later, both are engaged to other people and the games are still going on. They have now reached the point of flying to opposite coasts of America to play them. You may think this whole process could have been short-circuited if they had simply bought a bottle of red wine and a motel room five years earlier, or by their respective fiances telling each of them to get a life. There mightn't have been a movie, but you wouldn't have wasted an evening.
* DVD features: movie (95min); commentary by director Pete Chelsom; deleted scenes; still gallery.
Rental video, DVD: Today
