User reviews

A truly unique comedy, haven't seen anything like it other than I Heart Huckabees, which O'Russel made a decade later. A neurotic man escapes from his neurotic family to go on a cross country search for his biological parents. Along the way we deal with his neurotic girlfriend and the neurotic families he encounters as he tries to find his true parents, whom are also neurotics.

The characters are non-stop nutty and their flaws are unique and hilarious. They talk over each other constantly and never seem to be really 'conversing' with each other other than pointing out each other flaws. All these moments were done well by O'Russel and he really nailed the talking-past-each other flexing that neurotics have when in a group together.

Only complaint is that the movie kinda overdoses on itself and barely leaves room for the audience to breath. The group-fighting gets tiresome/doesn't work in a couple of scenes but a hilarious ending makes it all worth it.

Comedies like this are a real rarerity, especially nowadays. You almost never see a movie thats this intelligent and funny. Ben Stiller is hilarious as the man who is traveling around the US to find his biological parents. Lily Tomlin and Alan Alda are hilarious as well as his biological parents. This is definately a must see comedy, and I very rarely give comedies good reviews. ***1/2 out of ****.

FLIRTING WITH DISASTER (1996) **** Ben Stiller, Patricia Arquette, Tea Leoni, Alan Alda, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Lily Tomlin, Richard Jenkins, Josh Brolin. Hilarious and wickedly sharp satire about a young man (Stiller in a memorable turn) searching for his identity by trying to locate his biological parents while alienating his neglected and lovely wife (the yummy Arquette) and Leoni (simply wonderful) as his adoption broker. Fine ensemble cast (especially Moore in an inconoclastic poke at her image) and Alda (ditto). Subversive good, clean fun and seriously dysfunctional family values (thank God!) from filmmaker David O. Russell beating the Sophomore Jinx (in this his second turn at the helm).

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.

I was expecting a hidden gem comedy watching this coming from David O. Russell now one of our most distinguished and popular directors and with a great all star cast and looking at the reviews it got I knew this was a cant-miss movie.

I cant give this my highest recommendation. This is not a perfect film, nor even a truly great film, but it definitely was interesting, never boring, I never wanted to turn it off and the performances are all great.

I think this ran out of gas a little bit towards the end say the last 20 minutes or so. At that point it just tries to resolve everything at a far too hasty pace but everything up until the end did work and I enjoyed it. The ending wasnt bad, I just think they could have spent a little more time on plot development.

As a person who spent his whole life knowing nothing about his biological grandfather until later in adulthood, the premise of Ben Stiller seeking to know who his biological parents are who gave him up for adoption is a fantastic premise and can work either in comedy or drama very well.

On that level I felt I related a lot to Stiller's character and that gave the movie a huge boost of enjoyment for me.

I would have liked a few more scenes with Mary Tyler Moore and George Segal as the adoptive parents. Moore was a fine actress. Wonderful on her famous sitcom, and fantastic in Robert Redford's Ordinary People and she is great here too, albeit she doesnt have very much to do. I think a few more scenes with her and Segal would have made this an even better movie but that is not a huge criticism nor to say this is a bad film by any means.

Stiller is just fine and it's easy to see why he became so popular later on with There's Something About Mary and the Meet the Parents franchise.

Patricia Arquette, Tea Leoni, Richard Jenkins, Josh Brolin, Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin are all equally excellent giving this comedy the appropriate support it needs.

There are some big laughs and even when the film is not laugh out loud hilarious its still interesting enough to hold your attention.

I guess I would have to say the ending was a little too abrupt preventing this very good film from being an excellent comedy.

Again I think another ten minutes at the conclusion would have made this more stronger and maybe even one of the best comedies of the 1990's.

As it stands though the film is still very good and due to the strength of the performance as well as an intriguing premise I can say without hesitation I would recommend seeing it at least once.

This is one of the few movies I find seriously funny. Stiller, Leoni, Moore, everyone does a killer job, and humor emerges from a variety of silly-crazy and intellectual sources, so you can respect yourself when you laugh. Human neuroses give rise to a lot of sympathetic laughter. Most of it is human frailty and absurdity. Tea Leoni is hilarious, and does a great job of getting on your nerves, and trying to get into Stiller's pants behind his wife's back while still being completely neurotic and self-absorbed. Her psycho-babble is highly effective. Stiller plays the usual awkward introspective man who lacks self confidence. His parents are magnificent, and so are his 'real' parents. I loved it. highly recommended. What else are you going to watch?

This is a turbulent independent comedy which is good for some laughs. The beginning is really great but as one gets used to the chaos it goes on one's nerves, unfortunately. On the whole, every movie in connection with Ben Stiller is good. That's why I can recommend this movie to people who enjoyed "Reality Bites" or "There's Something about Mary".

I'm under the impression that 'Flirting With Disaster' JUST isn't getting the respect it totally deserves. No special DVD or anything, it just sits there, waiting to be discovered. I saw this when it first hit the theater, and I have it on VHS (yeah yeah I know, I'm just waiting for the special edition DVD to come out!). I love the plot of this one. Ben Stiller travels with his perfectly cast wife, Patricia Arquette and the adoption agency agent, played by Tia Leoni to try to discover his parents who gave him up for adoption. He needs to have a sense of closure, and also to give a name to his son. He probably didn't realize that this would involve Indian wrestling, truck driving lessons, or a married male couple of FBI agents. The story just piles one hilarious situation after another. I've seen this film at LEAST 10 times and I STILL laugh out loud. It's just THAT funny!

I came on this 1996 comedy by chance, and it exceeded all my expectations. An unpromising premise - an adopted man (Ben Stiller), to resolve some "issues", sets out in search of his birth parents with wife (Patricia Arquette), new child, & representative from the adoption agency (Tea Leoni) in tow - provides rich fodder for hilarity as this Freudian odyssey careens from one disaster to another, turning into a psycho-sexual catastrophe. A very funny script is aided by the stellar work of Mary Tyler Moore and George Segal as the adoptive parents - none too thrilled with this quest - and Lily Tomlin and Alan Alda as the post-Woodstock birth parents. A laugh riot which is well worth seeing !

Scanning the other reviews on here, I realize I'm totally in the minority here. But I thought this was a total stinker.

I kept watching, hoping that it would get better. But the more I watched, the more I thought the screenplay was the byproduct of watching too many Woody Allen movies.

The biggest problem was that I just couldn't believe what was going on before my eyes. Maybe I'm too much of a "meat and potatoes" mindset, but the characters and situations just got more and more unrealistic and I cared less and less about these people.

This is only the third David O. Russell film I've seen. SPANKING THE MONKEY was clever. After trying to watch it three times I finally gave up on I HEART HUCKABEES. After this, I've added him to my mental checklist of Film Makers to Avoid.

Hack though Mr. Russell may be, though, he couldn't get a bad performance out of Richard Jenkins.

This movie is truly a masterpiece. The plot, the acting, the scenery...everything!

It is about Mel Coplin (Stiller) who is puzzled who he really is a couple months after his baby is born. He becomes addicted to the fact that he indeed doesn't know who he is. Finally, he receives information of where his birth mother is. He gets on a plane with his wife, Nancy (Patricia Arquette), and the adoption agency associate that he is working with, Tina (Téa Leoni). Together they all fly to San Diego only to discover that there has been some terrible mistake--this woman in San Diego is not his birth mother.

Well, I won't ruin the rest of this hilarious and ongoing plot for you. I guarantee that you will laugh sometime in this movie...whether it is at the little old lady in the bed and breakfast, or when Tina maces the church workman in San Diego.

Offbeat, squirrelly comedy about the ramifications of adoption has Ben Stiller amiably playing a New York man, adopted at birth, curious about his biological parents. He embarks on a cross-country trip to meet the couple who conceived him along with his wife and child, and a neurotic counselor there for moral support. Low-keyed wackiness manages to wring laughs out of the recognizable foibles of the characters and their dialogue, not sight-gags (wonderful to behold). However, the picture loses its footing in the final stretch, becoming brash and labored. It sadly wears out its welcome, but with such a terrific cast it's definitely worth-seeing. **1/2 from ****

I was attracted by the cast, and the story started out promisingly. However, that's where the good ends with this film. I checked this movie out of the public library (for free...) and I can unhesitatingly state that I was ripped off! Okay, that's probably a bit too harsh, but there's absolutely nothing above average about this film. All of the characters, with the exception of Arquette's, are ridiculous caricatures. This would normally be okay, except for the fact that the jokes are rarely funny. Alda and Tomlin briefly showed signs of rescuing the film (which is why I continued to watch) but they just aren't in the movie for a long enough time.

I admittedly have not watched anything else by this director and haven't seen everything by Woody Allen, but I felt that Flirting... should have included some kind of gushing "thank you" to Woody somewhere in the credits.

The types of characters and their accompanying lines were obviously inspired by Woody (but his are usually comedic). In sum, we have 90 minutes of several unlikeable, non-humorous, bozos running around the country.

This film tells the story of a new father who decides to skip his adoptive father's sixtieth birthday celebration to find his biological parents.

"Flirting with Disaster" has a very happening plot, with new unexpected events every few minutes. It details a trip that goes wrong at every turn, some are innocent mishaps while some are truly disastrous. It illustrates Murphy's Law very well! The story is darkly humorous, it is not laugh out loud funny, but it keeps viewers entertained and engaged with a smile on the face. It is also quite interesting to see what many famous faces looked like twenty years ago. I can't quite believe the policeman is Josh Brolin, for example.

The title to Flirting With Disaster is one that grabs you right off. It sounds like a great comedy, plus it really helps that it is directed by the wonderful David O. Russell and has several great comic actors like Ben Stiller, Alan Alda, and Lily Tomlin. The film is on the other hand a big disappointment. While Flirting With Disaster is far from being bad it is only decent while I had expected it to be great. the performances by Alan Alda and Ben Stiller are bother very good as is the screenplay but most things are from fair to mediocre. The plot centers around a young man who is married and has just had a baby who with his wife goes to find his real parents because he was adopted. Original Plot. Thank god the script is good.

David O. Russell's 1996 flick "Flirting with Disaster" might not leave the audience feeling dirty afterward like his prior work "Spanking the Monkey", but what it lacks in controversy it makes up for in over the top wackiness. This is modern-day dark edged screwball comedy that would like make master filmmaker Howard Hawks ("His Girl Friday", "Bringing Up Baby") proud.

Russell's film weaves the ludicrous story of a thirty year old, first time father who can't overcome the challenges of not knowing his birth parents enough to see his wife's sexual advances or even give his kid a name. Who else could we expect to see in a role so heavily stacked with Murphy's Law possibilities than that consummate lovable loser Ben Stiller? Before we know it he, his wife, and an incompetent adoption case worker set out to meet his birth parents.

What follows is the full range of comedic possibilities from the standard road trip to off-the-wall characterizations, mistaken identity, love triangles, attempted murder, and armpit fetishism. Somehow it all flows so brilliantly that all of the craziness becomes quite plausible in what turns out to be a film that is a bit charming and damn funny.

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.

Funny as hell. Good characters and awkward situations, basically Stiller's career in a nutshell, but this one does it really well. A guy trying to find his biological parents winds up in strange situations with a group of wildly different people on a road trip. Great script and made well with a great director.

An adopted man goes searching for his birth parents. Hilarity ensues. Not really. Actually there are zero laughs for the first half hour or so. The first chuckle is supplied when Brolin enters the picture as a gay Federal agent. From that point, it becomes mildly amusing, thanks to a terrific cast. It's nice to see the likes of Moore, Segal, Tomlin, and Alda, although sexual scenes of these old-timers is the kind of imagery one does not want lingering in the mind. This film provided Stiller with a career template for playing neurotic men who keep encountering disaster, but the script here is not as witty and the plot not as engaging as some of his later efforts.

This movie is overwritten. The screenwriter(s) felt it necessary to relentlessly hit you with line after line after line after line, with no room for you mentally "breathe" and digest what everyone was saying and why they might be saying it. They also mistake characters saying obviously incorrect or obnoxious things as humor. In spite of this being a movie about a character seeking his real parents, there is surprisingly little real inspection of the characters' true natures and motivations. There's an age-old saying, "show me don't tell me", but this film does a lot of telling and disturbingly little showing. It's not horrible, so it still gets 4 stars out of 10, but it also has few redeeming qualities unless you consider amateur pratfalls and shallow insults to be humor.

Love this movie! My husband n I adopted 2 boys in 1987 and 2002. We had a much better experience than these characters, but we love the characterizations!

I've enjoyed most of David O. Russell's movies and I know it's supposed to be screwball comedy and all, but this one had a few too many goofy, contrived plot twists for my taste—like when gay ATF agent Richard Jenkins impulsively decides to follow a guy he's never met before (and whose wife his committed gay partner's been flirting with) all the way to New Mexico to help him find his birth parents.

I liked the scenes where Stiller and Téa Leoni get so wrapped up in each other that they start knocking over the furniture, but it didn't seem like Téa was really pulling her weight the rest of the time, and though I was impressed by the outside-the-box casting choice of MTM as the nudzhy Jewish mother, I was kind of hoping her character wouldn't show up again after the opening scenes. Finally, I couldn't really buy Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin as desert-rat drug dealers, though I enjoyed the antics of their sociopathic teenage son.

I know Russell goes in for these big ensemble comedies with everybody yelling and carrying on, but this time, as with "Silver Linings Playbook" a few years back, it seemed like the plot was already spinning out of control with 20 or 30 frantic, not-sot-funny minutes left to go. Eight stars for the first 45′, four for the second.

Not funny. I understand that the directors last movie was excellent. Not to self - save the good script for seconds.

Is it a comedy? Is it a road movie? What are all these familiar actors in the movie - didn't they read the script.

It reminds me of those early 80's 'comedies' from the Saturday Nite crew which look so dated now.

Read a book - watch some sport. (Actually did it remind anyone else of a 'life less ordinary'?)