Sorry, this movie sucks

Simply A Masterpiece

Sadly Over-hyped

Really Surprised!

Mel Coplin (Ben Stiller) is having a crisis after the birth of his son. He needs to find his biological parents. His horny wife Nancy (Patricia Arquette) wants to have sex. Tina Kalb (Téa Leoni) from the adoption agency finds his mother Valerie Swaney (Celia Weston) in San Diego and is willing to pay for the reunion as long as she films it for her doctoral research. His adoptive parents Pearl (Mary Tyler Moore) and Ed (George Segal) are weirdly inappropriate. Nancy is jealous of the flirting between Tina and Mel. They find out that Valerie isn't the mother after all. They track down their lowlife trucker father Fritz Boudreau. He points out that his father might actually be Richard Schlichting (Alan Alda). They run into Nancy's high school friend ATF agent Tony Kent (Josh Brolin) after Mel accidentally backs Fritz's truck into a post office. It turns out his ATF partner Paul Harmon (Richard Jenkins) is also his gay partner. Paul and Tony join them on their trip to New Mexico to meet Richard and Mary Schlichting (Lily Tomlin) who has a son Lonnie (Glenn Fitzgerald). It's sexual chaos as Mel flirts with Tina and Tony flirts with Nancy. That's before Lonnie accidentally put LSD on Paul's quail and the Coplins show up.It's super quirky, sometimes funny, and always rambling. Mary Tyler Moore is especially funny. It's a messy human train wreck careening from one end of the country to the other. Writer/director David O. Russell has pull together a cast of crazy characters in a stew of chaos. The title may be referring to the film as much as the main character. It is on the edge of being a train wreck. The fact that this stays on tracks is a miracle. Ben Stiller isn't that funny although he's tasked with the straight man role. It tries so very hard but the jokes aren't always hitting. Maybe there are too many big characters in this madcap comedy. The craziness just overwhelms everything.

Flirting with Disaster (1996)This is one of those movies that's just plain stupid in such a funny way you'll likely laugh out loud a lot. And you'll finish thinking it's a pretty stupid movie. The ending in particular makes you wonder what all the build up was about since it diffuses, as if the writers ran out of conflicts (or solutions) and raised their hands in surrender.But on the way there is one funny gag after another. And a whole slew of excellent actors doing their zany best. Some of them have very brief (and contained) appearances, for sure--Lily Tomlin and Alan Alda, for example, in a hilarious section of the movie with little connection to the rest of it. In fact, the whole movie is broken into spasmodic sections, held together mostly by the three leading leads (there are lots of main characters): Ben Stiller (looking for his biological parents), Patricia Arquette (his suffering, sweet wife), and Tea Leoni (the mentally incomplete but skinny and sexy interloper). Stiller isn't actually totally funny by himself, but acts like more of a foil for all the crazy things happening around him (this is his style on purpose, a kind of regular guy in an irregular world). Arquette is almost too normal for this abnormal world, but that's fine, she's likable, and is meant to be the loving wife who doesn't quite know how zany the events around her are. At first. Leoni has a terrific way of making nutty faces and being just slightly insane without being just stupid (the way Will Ferrell is just stupid in a different kind of humor). There are gay jokes and jokes about LSD and a general playing of an ultra-licentious world against what seems to be a normal human desire to connect with your genetic parents, unknown to you. The mistakes along the way are what make it hilarious. Until the end, where it maybe is trying to say, "Oh well, everything is okay in a world where anything goes." Sure. Pop the big bubble, but on the way it's a gas. No pun intended.

David O. Russell directs "Flirting With Disaster". The plot? Ben Stiller plays Mel Coplin, a young man who attempts to find the biological parents with whom he has never had contact. This, he hopes, will explain "why he is why he is". Unfortunately Mel keeps meeting the wrong people, all of whom he keeps mistaking for kin. The film ends with Mel eventually meeting his genetic parents – a pair of marijuana growing hippies – but its overall point is that there are always other prospective partners, people and kin vying for our attention and more. What matters or defines us are ultimately the choices we make, rather than the genes in our bodies or the company we keep. This stance is the opposite of Russell's "Huckabees", where choices seem irrelevant in light of social/cultural programming. Russell was a political activist/scientist before turning to film."Flirting With Disaster" sports funny performances from Tea Leoni, Alan Alda and the oft underused Lily Tomlin. Its last and first acts are very funny, but things slow down during its middle portion. The film's structured as a "road movie". If Russell's underrated "I Heart Huckabees" was a existential comedy in the vein of late Woody Allen, "Flirting With Disaster" is a light farce in the vein of Allen's earlier, madcap comedies.8/10 – Worth one viewing.

Absent since 2004's misbegotten "I Heart Huckabees", filmmaker David O. Russell made a ramshackle screwball farce back in 1996 that's well worth revisiting on DVD, at least until his next film comes along. He was able to blend character-driven humor with moments of pure slapstick as he tracks the misadventures of Mel Coplin, a neurotic entomologist on a frantic search for his birth parents to resolve his long-standing issues with identity. Tina Kalb, a leggy, off-kilter adoption agency worker thinks she's found Mel's mother in San Diego, so Mel, Tina, and Mel's sweetly frumpy wife Nancy, nursing their five-month baby, embark on a journey that becomes ever more haphazard with every turn of events. Unsurprisingly, an attraction develops between Mel and Tina, who is anxious to get pregnant herself. They meet a gallery of eccentric characters in what becomes a memorably wacky road trip. The real coup with this under-appreciated film is the casting. Long before he sold himself up the river with execrably witless comedies like "Meet the Fockers" and "The Heartbreak Kid", Ben Stiller was a promising actor of relative subtlety, and he expertly mans the rudder as Mel with his skittish self-containment. An actress who never seems to fulfill her potential, Téa Leoni brings a mix of klutziness and sexy smarts to the incompetent Tina. As Nancy, Patricia Arquette has a soft, fuzzy quality that makes a nice contrast to Leoni's angularity.Russell was smart to cast four veterans as Mel's two sets of parents. As his adoptive parents, George Segal and a cast-against-type Mary Tyler Moore are hilarious playing classic New York Jewish stereotypes. Moore, in particular, has a field day playing the obnoxious dark side of Rhoda Morgenstern rightfully proud of her unsagging breasts. As the couple who turn out to be Mel's real parents, Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin are equally funny as graying New Mexico hippies heavy into their art and LSD. When Mel meets them, that's when the film becomes a whirlwind, "Noises Off"-type of farce with all the personal shenanigans coming to a head. Playing a gay couple who happen to be FBI agents, a surprisingly deft Josh Brolin ("No Country for Old Men") and the always dependable Richard Jenkins (superb in this year's "The Visitor") shine as bickering personality opposites. Glenn Fitzgerald as Mel's psychotic brother and Celia Weston as a Reagan-loving Southern matron round out a razor-sharp cast. It all ends rather abruptly, but Russell shows a genuine talent for juggling a lot of comic possibilities with supple dexterity. The 2004 Collector's Edition DVD is light on extras - just three deleted scenes, a few outtakes that don't compare to the final film, and a brief featurette on the film's development and production.