Gordon-11 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.

leonblackwood Review: It's always good to watch actors earlier work so you can see how far they have come. In this case I chose Ben Stiller who hasn't really changed his style of comedy that much since 1996. His mannerisms and silly face expressions are more or less the same but he's got bigger budgets to play with nowadays so he doesn't have to rely on his performances to much, like in Tropic Thunder and Night At the Museum. Anyway, this movie is about Stiller hunting for his biological parents after his wife gives birth to his son. With the help of his wife and his sexy adoption agency worker, who wants to film the whole event, they start there journey which has its ups and downs. The adoption agency ends up getting Stillers biological parents identify wrong so there journey becomes bigger then they first thought. When he finally tracks down his parents, the situation goes from bad to worse because of his parents weird habits and strange lifestyle. The movie was quite funny in parts but the storyline is extremely far fetched. The young Josh Brolin and his gay partner, played by Richard Jenkins, was quite a weird choice by the director but they played there parts quite well. I've always been a fan of George Segal and I liked the chemistry between Alan Ada and Lily Tomlin but I did lose interest after a while. Anyway, it's light hearted fun which is silly in parts, but watchable. Average!Round-Up: It's weird seeing Josh Brolin star in a comedy were he is playing a gay role after seeing him in butch movies like Oldboy, No Country For Old Men and Sin City. The movie was made earlier on in his career so I can't blame him for taking on the project. This was also made earlier on in Ben Stillers career and it really does prove that his range is limited because he hasn't progressed as a comedian that much. His films always gross a lot at the box office and with Rentaghost and Zoolander 2 in the pipework, he is still a bankable actor for the big studios. I know a lot of people that are fed up with his movies but I doubt that he will go down the same route as Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy, who find it hard to pull in the big audiences nowadays. Budget: $7million Worldwide Gross: $15millionI recommend this movie to people who are into their comedies about a man whose trying to find his biological parents so he can name his newborn baby. 4/10

slcagnina I am amazed that this film is not in IMDb's top 250.I rented this years ago, back when video was around, and it was the only film I ever rented where I rewound the tape and immediately watched the whole thing again. Everything works. The cast is perfect, the writing is perfect. Most comedies are lucky to be funny -- Flirting works as an incisive story about a marriage going thru a tuff patch -- it could have been an excellent drama -- and as a screwball comedy. Is there another movie that does that? I can't think of one. This is a modern classic. It's awesome. It's unique. 20 years from now, will anyone remember Forget Sarah Marshall? I liked that film, but 20 years from now, it'll be lucky to be a footnote. Flirting will be remembered and watched. Trust me. Bringing up Baby wasn't a success upon release. But it's a classic that endures, and so will Flirting. One day, it will be in that top 250. Time usually corrects.

Ed Uyeshima 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.