Flirting with Disaster (1996)
(On Cable TV, January 2019) Twenty-few years later, you could think that Flirting with Disaster would be worth a look solely for being an early vehicle for writer/director David O. Russell and a cast with more known names than is worth enumerating. But Russell’s script deliberately leans in the oddball direction (like most of his other movies, in fact) and so this quirky independent comedy soon takes us through the United States with a bunch of eccentric characters as the protagonist tries to find the identity of his biological parents. The plot is contrived, but that’s the nature of the thing. There are twists and turns, humiliating moments, some flirting for both married characters and a few false leads in the biological parent search. Ben Stiller, Patricia Arquette and Téa Leoni make up for a decent trio of leads, with decent supporting players in smaller roles. Mostly but not solely worth watching by Russell fans, Flirting with Disaster amounts to a quirky, amiable, decently entertaining film but not a particularly memorable one even despite its conscious decision to be off the wall.
