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FLIRTING WITH DISASTER
Long before he became obsessed with Jennifer Lawrence, director/writer David O. Russell journeyed into Woody Allen territory with an offbeat and unpredictable comedy called Flirting with Disaster which takes a realistic premise to some really illogical and cringe-worthy places but does it all for the sake of entertainment and as pure entertainment, it totally works.
The 1996 film stars Ben Stiller as Mel Coplin, an uptight New Yorker adjusting to the birth of his first child and trying to get his sex life back on track with wife Nancy (Patricia Arquette), who was adopted as a child and does not want to name his child until he meets his biological parents. With the help of a loopy adoption center employee and graduate student named Tina, played by Tea Leoni, Mel learns that his biological mother has been located and has agreed to a meeting, which is the springboard for one of the most outrageously entertaining road trips mounted for the screen, providing constant challenges to Mel and Nancy's marriage and surprises at every turn.
Admittedly, there are things that happen here that I really didn't understand, primarily the fact that Tina accompanies the Coplins on this journey and wants to document the entire thing on film. I would think that an adopted adult meeting his biological parents for the first time would be a private thing for him and his family and having a stranger witness every moment just seems wrong on all kinds of levels, the most disturbing of which is the immediate sexual attraction between Mel and Tina and how they both try to pretend it's not going on. When it turns out that Tina has brought Mel to the wrong woman (Celia Weston), I would think that the woman would have been immediately terminated from her job, or at least told to leave the Coplins alone, but this doesn't happen.
The story even gets murkier with the introduction of a pair of police detectives (Richard Jenkins, Josh Brolin) who are not all they seem and manage to also become tangled into this very confusing web of events. Though these detectives' story doesn't take too long to come to light, we can see it's only going to take an already extremely awkward situation to an even more awkward level here.
This was one of the few times that Russell's writing was as solid as his direction...the script has a very Woody Allen quality to it...extremely appealing characters wrapped up in questionable behavior and often being completely unapologetic about it. Russell has also pulled terrific performances from his cast...Stiller does solid leading man work and the relationship he creates with Arquette is credible and evokes support from the viewer. Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin, George Segal, and especially Mary Tyler Moore, in an eye opening turn, score as the varied bio and adopted parents involved in this convoluted but entertaining story that defies logic and convention from scene to scene but never fails to entertain.
Long before he became obsessed with Jennifer Lawrence, director/writer David O. Russell journeyed into Woody Allen territory with an offbeat and unpredictable comedy called Flirting with Disaster which takes a realistic premise to some really illogical and cringe-worthy places but does it all for the sake of entertainment and as pure entertainment, it totally works.
The 1996 film stars Ben Stiller as Mel Coplin, an uptight New Yorker adjusting to the birth of his first child and trying to get his sex life back on track with wife Nancy (Patricia Arquette), who was adopted as a child and does not want to name his child until he meets his biological parents. With the help of a loopy adoption center employee and graduate student named Tina, played by Tea Leoni, Mel learns that his biological mother has been located and has agreed to a meeting, which is the springboard for one of the most outrageously entertaining road trips mounted for the screen, providing constant challenges to Mel and Nancy's marriage and surprises at every turn.
Admittedly, there are things that happen here that I really didn't understand, primarily the fact that Tina accompanies the Coplins on this journey and wants to document the entire thing on film. I would think that an adopted adult meeting his biological parents for the first time would be a private thing for him and his family and having a stranger witness every moment just seems wrong on all kinds of levels, the most disturbing of which is the immediate sexual attraction between Mel and Tina and how they both try to pretend it's not going on. When it turns out that Tina has brought Mel to the wrong woman (Celia Weston), I would think that the woman would have been immediately terminated from her job, or at least told to leave the Coplins alone, but this doesn't happen.
The story even gets murkier with the introduction of a pair of police detectives (Richard Jenkins, Josh Brolin) who are not all they seem and manage to also become tangled into this very confusing web of events. Though these detectives' story doesn't take too long to come to light, we can see it's only going to take an already extremely awkward situation to an even more awkward level here.
This was one of the few times that Russell's writing was as solid as his direction...the script has a very Woody Allen quality to it...extremely appealing characters wrapped up in questionable behavior and often being completely unapologetic about it. Russell has also pulled terrific performances from his cast...Stiller does solid leading man work and the relationship he creates with Arquette is credible and evokes support from the viewer. Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin, George Segal, and especially Mary Tyler Moore, in an eye opening turn, score as the varied bio and adopted parents involved in this convoluted but entertaining story that defies logic and convention from scene to scene but never fails to entertain.