About.com Rating



The 1996 comedy Flirting With Disaster is yet another selection from the era when Ben Stiller was on a major roll: the 1990s.

Watching Flirting With Disaster now, one becomes nostalgic for the days when Ben Stiller (of The Ben Stiller Show was funny -- or at least bothered to act (films like Zero Effect, Permanent Midnight, and Your Friends and Neighbors made up his heyday). These days, it hardly seems like a comedy is released that doesn't showcase Stiller either mugging as his "intense character" or being desperately embarrassed in some way.

Flirting With Disaster doesn't require much more of him than to be put-upon, but understands two essential factors when it comes to using him as an actor: 1) We have to like him, but only kind of; 2) if you're going to have him put-upon, make sure it's within the context of funny situations (not a lost cat) and surround him with funny supporting characters (not Jennifer Aniston).

Stiller plays overly-neurotic entomologist Mel Coplin, adopted as a baby and who now blames all of his current issues on his lack of a "real identity." The son he's just had with his wife, Nancy (Patricia Arquette), is already four months old and doesn't have a name yet -- another side effect of Mel's identity issues. So, Mel decides that locating his biological parents will magically cure him of his neuroses and restore order to the Coplins' lives.

Running the search for Mel's parents is a would-be psychologist from the adoption agency, Tina (Téa Leoni), who is struggling with an infinite number of neuroses of her own.

Not only is Tina a chain-smoking, heavy-drinking, sexually frustrated mental and emotional wreck, but she's fairly incompetent at her job as well -- the task of locating Mel's birth parents becomes nearly impossible in her less-than-capable hands. So awry do her plans go that Mel, Nancy, Tina and the yet-to-be-named baby all find themselves in the custody of two ATF agents (Josh Brolin and Richard Jenkins).

Flirting With Disaster is that rare find -- a comedy that builds entirely out of character and dialogue, without falling back on the forced situational humor or laborious gags that plague ninety percent of recent American comedies. The movie clearly finds sex intriguing and even funny, but it's just a part of its characters' lives -- not the foundation, as it is in so many other films. At the risk of sounding pretentious (which I love to do), it's a more cerebral comedy, more about addressing issues of identity, sexuality and relationships than having characters fall down or have to go to the bathroom unexpectedly. The film is a true original, and one of the finest comedies to come out of the 1990s.

In many ways, I'd compare Flirting With Disaster with the best works of Woody Allen, only director David O. Russell is willing to go further and get more absurd than Woody. Flirting's characters are similarly trapped by their neuroses and obsessions, but often times Woody's plots became inhibited by those same things. Allen's films sometimes wind up boxed in by their characters' issues; Flirting With Disaster, on the other hand, is liberated by them. The film is not limited to being solely about the idiosyncrasies of its characters; instead, it allows those idiosyncrasies to dictate the way the characters will behave in a given situation. Woody would be proud.

• Original Release Date: March 22, 1996