Flirting with Disaster

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Flirting with Disaster ★★★ 1995 (R)

Mel Coplin (Stiller) is your average neurotic New York entomologist searching for his birth parents so he can finally name his four-month-old child and make love to his wife. Tagging along on his bumpy ride are his wife Nancy (Arquette), a beautiful quirky adoption agency shrink (Leoni), and a pair of bisexual FBI agents. The excellent cast also features Moore as Mel's bra-baring adoptive mother, Segal as his weirdly paranoid adoptive father, and Alda and Tomlin as hilarious send-ups of exhippie mentality. As events spin madly out of control, every type of relationship is satirized, and every character is left in their underwear. This is director Russell's first big-budget movie, and is as close to a vintage screwball comedy as you'll see in the ‘90s. 92m/C VHS, DVD . Ben Stiller, Patricia Arquette, Tea Leoni, Alan Alda, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Lily Tomlin, Josh Brolin, Richard Jenkins, Celia Weston, Glenn Fitzgerald, Beth Ostrosky, Cynthia Lamontagne, David Patrick Kelly, John Ford Noonan, Charles Oberly; D: David O. Russell; W: David O. Russell; C: Eric Alan Edwards; M: Stephen Endelman.