Review of Flirting with Disaster (1996) by Alex F — 25 Aug 2015

Flirting With Disaster is directed by one of my personal favorite directors, David O. Russell. This director did what I never thought could be fully possible, I found a movie where I liked Ben Stiller! The whole cast, Ben Stiller included, was brilliant and perfect.

The leads were fantastic and really realistic portrayals of real people involved in marriage troubles. The real scene stealers, however, were George Segal, Mary Tyler Moore, and Richard Jenkins. I laughed at every moment they were on screen and played a major role in what made this movie so funny.

Besides the characters listed, the other laughs were basically based on situational or physical humor, like Mel's parents being acid dealers. The story in a nutshell involves Mel in search of his long lost parents he never knew and him along with his wife, Nancy, and the adoption agency woman.

Both of them struggle to stay calm with each other and slowly start to fade towards other people. While I read the plot for the movie, on paper, it sounded like it was going to be one bad event after another sort of situation but it resulted in a lot of great comedic writing and realistic themes.

While the film shows off a couple sort of breaking apart a bit, it explores what marriage is really like sometimes and that we aren't always thinking about what we have already. What I mean is that we sometimes misjudge people for acting selfish when it could really just be yourself in the end.

Both the characters of Mel and Nancy could be disliked by an audience but I find it impossible to simply because they still love each other and are able to jump over an obstacle because they realize what is right for them.

There's a few conversations throughout the film about what's morally right and how to handle a situation like they did. This film perfectly blends two plots together and they really go hand in hand.

You can call this movie a romantic comedy, a road trip movie, or even a realistic drama. What makes films like this so great is when they are able to stick to the plot without branching off to other unnecessary subplots.

The cast had excellent chemistry, Patricia Arquette and Ben Stiller are really likable once you realize that this is a real life thing, and I felt kind of a connection to this movie because anyone who has gotten into an argument with someone they love knows how some of these characters feel.

Flirting With Disaster is a really good film that accurately displays what it means to be in a relationship/married. It's hard to watch at times but in the end I knew that this realistic plot is meaningful and really sweet.

B+.