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Flirting With DisasterRating:
Release Date: 01 June, 2004 Retail Price: $14.99 OUR Price: $13.99 You SAVE: $1.00! Cast: |
Flirting With Disaster Reviews
Sea of Strange
"Flirting With Disaster" is a wild romp directed by David O. Russell who burst onto the scene with "Spanking the Monkey" and has since directed "Three Kings" with George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg & Ice Cube and "I Heart Huckabees." He does a good job keeping us off balance and having each new scene and character provide something fresh.
Ben Stiller has developed into one of the United States' true comic stars. Son of Jerry Stiller & Anne Meara, his timing is edgy and his ability to portray confused discomfort in awkward situations is classic. With better known films like "There's Something About Mary," "Meet the Parents," "Meet the Fockers," "Dodgeball," "The Royal Tannenbaums" & "Starsky & Hutch," he's developed a large body of excellent work. As Mel Coplin, he's a quiet family man who has trouble making decisions, like naming their baby who was born months ago. As an adoptee, he starts out on a search to find his birth parents.
Patricia Arquette plays his wife Nancy. She recently was nominated for an Emmy for Best Actress in a drama for the NBC series "Medium" (a show that I watch every episode!). She's previously acted in "Holes," "Beyond Rangoon" & "Little Nicky." As Nancy, she seems to be the anchor for the movie, the lone island of sanity in a sea of strange.
As the Coplins, Mel's adoptive parents, George Segal plays the father. From classic films "The Owl & the Pussycat" & "A Touch of Class," his lone Oscar nomination was in 1966 as supporting actor for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" with Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor. His comic sense is in full flare as he pushes and pulls with his wife in an ongoing struggle. Mary Tyler Moore plays his wife, self-obsessed, chronically uptight & full of complaint. Tyler's lone Oscar nomination came as best actress in the Robert Redford-directed 1980 film "Ordinary People." The buzz from this film was that she appeared in a provocative black bra that she does indeed wear well! :)
Mel Coplin is assisted in trying to find his birth parents by a psychology student Tina played by Tea Leoni. She'll soon be seen in "Fun With Dick & Jane" with Jim Carrey & Angie Harmon. Other films where I've enjoyed her performances are the serious disaster movie "Deep Impact" and the funny "Spanglish." Here her character is edgy and neurotic, a divorcee attracted to Mel, trudging to the bathroom in provocative black underwear. She has an uncanny ability to screw things up & continually throw monkey wrenches into what we think SHOULD have been easier.
Midway into the picture after Mel thinks he's met his father, a low-brow truck driver, and takes a driving lesson only to flatten a post office & discover his real parents are elsewhere, we run into two agents from the FBI & Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms. Josh Brolin, son of actor James Brolin, plays Tony who knew Nancy Coplin from high school. As an actor, Brolin has appeared in Woody Allen's "Melinda & Melinda," "Bed of Roses," & has "Into the Blue" out this year. His partner we discover is also his gay husband Paul played by Richard Jenkins. Jenkins will star with Leoni & Carrey in "Fun With Dick & Jane" and is best known for the HBO series "Six Feet Under." He was nominated as best supporting actor by the Independent Spirit Awards for this film. Both characters are a mix of the orthodox and unexpected. Brolin has a scene-stealer where he licks Nancy's armpit as her husband walks in. Jenkins has a scene-stealer as he's been laced with an overdose of LSD and flits around the countryside in his tighty-whities.
The Coplins eventually find their birth parents who are counter culturals making their living by selling LSD-laced decals of Ronald Reagan. One of the funnies moments is when Mary Tyler Moore misunderstands their last name "Schlicting" and calls them the "Sh*t Kings." Alan Alda, known for the long-running "MASH" TV series as well as films like "The Object of My Affection" with Jennifer Aniston & Paul Rudd and his recent Best Supporting Actor nomination for "The Aviator," plays Richard Schlicting, an old hippy who followed the Grateful Dead. His wife Mary Schlicting is played by Lily Tomlin to great affect. She's the perfect counter-cultural earth mother. Tomlin, whose lone Oscar nomination was for her supporting role in the 1975 film "Nashville" and was a delightful Golden Globe nominee for one of my favorite films, "All of Me" in 1984, was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress in the Independent Spirit Awards for this film. Both provide wonderful moments and keep the comedy pace bubbling. Their misfit punk son Lonnie Schlicting is played to great effect by Glenn Fitzgerald who also appeared with Ryan Gosling in the white supremacist film "The Believer" and in "The Sixth Sense." His maladjusted neurosis suits the film's wild comedy perfectly.
This is a film that keeps moving with overlapping dialogue & nonstop breakneck pacing. While the characters can be so strange that they border on the irritating, all in all it's a good piece of comic film worth checking out performed by an all-star cast. Enjoy!
Some Jokers might think this isn't worth 5 stars
This is an absolutely stunning, painfully funny film, shamefully underrated (see also 'Office Space', 'Dirty Work' for similarly overlooked comic masterpieces). I'm not such a huge Ben Stiller fan, apart from in 'Mary, and 'Royal Tennenbaums', but he is perfectly cast here, as a reticent man, forced into some horrifically uncomfortable public humiliations.
It wouldn't be fair to reveal much of the plot, but the climax of Stiller's search for his biological parents is pure gut-renching black comedy.
Don't believe the critics who give this anything less than 5 stars - this is top-quality entertainment, for those who like their comedy black, and on the dry side.
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