Mel Coplin (Ben Stiller) is having a crisis after the birth of his son. He needs to find his biological parents. His horny wife Nancy (Patricia Arquette) wants to have sex. Tina Kalb (Téa Leoni) from the adoption agency finds his mother Valerie Swaney (Celia Weston) in San Diego and is willing to pay for the reunion as long as she films it for her doctoral research. His adoptive parents Pearl (Mary Tyler Moore) and Ed (George Segal) are weirdly inappropriate. Nancy is jealous of the flirting between Tina and Mel. They find out that Valerie isn't the mother after all. They track down their lowlife trucker father Fritz Boudreau. He points out that his father might actually be Richard Schlichting (Alan Alda). They run into Nancy's high school friend ATF agent Tony Kent (Josh Brolin) after Mel accidentally backs Fritz's truck into a post office. It turns out his ATF partner Paul Harmon (Richard Jenkins) is also his gay partner. Paul and Tony join them on their trip to New Mexico to meet Richard and Mary Schlichting (Lily Tomlin) who has a son Lonnie (Glenn Fitzgerald). It's sexual chaos as Mel flirts with Tina and Tony flirts with Nancy. That's before Lonnie accidentally put LSD on Paul's quail and the Coplins show up.

It's super quirky, sometimes funny, and always rambling. Mary Tyler Moore is especially funny. It's a messy human train wreck careening from one end of the country to the other. Writer/director David O. Russell has pull together a cast of crazy characters in a stew of chaos. The title may be referring to the film as much as the main character. It is on the edge of being a train wreck. The fact that this stays on tracks is a miracle. Ben Stiller isn't that funny although he's tasked with the straight man role. It tries so very hard but the jokes aren't always hitting. Maybe there are too many big characters in this madcap comedy. The craziness just overwhelms everything.

A young man (Ben Stiller),his wife (Patricia Arquette),and his incompetent case worker (Tea Leoni) travel across country to find his birth parents.

I watched this because it was Tea Leoni's birthday, and because I figured being a film from David Russell it could not be too bad. Boy, was that a mistake. This was pretty bland, to say the least. I do not want to give it a lower rating because it was not actually bad, but it was pretty lackluster as a comedy.

On the message boards, it seems that this was considered one of the better comedies of the 1990s. That is a sad thing. I grew up in the 1990s, and it had some great comedies. This is not a film I would add to that list... maybe not even in the top 100.

What misbegotten madman got the idea that this droll-fest was funny?! Less of a movie than a newsreel on depressants, "Flirting with Disaster" could not have had a better title, as it wastes a perfectly good cast and a potentially hilarious plot on pure idiocy. The plot (if it was supposed to be a plot) has adopted child Mel Coplin (Ben Stiller) and his wife Nancy (Patricia Arquette) searching for his biological parents. Accompanying them is floozy psychiatrist Tina Kalb (Tea Leoni),who makes more than a few moves on Mel.

Sound funny? Well guess what? It never is. Scenes that should have been uproarious end up making you feel like your face just melted, and you're lucky (or is that unlucky?) if you can stay awake until the end. Like I said, this hunk o' junk wastes not only the talents of the aforementioned stars, but also the talents of Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin, George Segal and Mary Tyler Moore; the only excuse that anyone could have for starring in this would be a financial strain. All in all, not only was this a poor excuse for a movie, but 1996 was truly a low point for the usually dependable Alan Alda - he also starred in the dreadfully horrible "Everyone Says I Love You", Woody Allen's worst movie ever.

As just an extra note, I might add a little something. People didn't like "The Cable Guy" (directed by Ben Stiller) because they thought that Jim Carrey was wrong for the role; I liked the movie's impending sense of doom. "Flirting with Disaster" essentially takes a good idea and stretches it out until it turns into a bunch of random strands that lead nowhere. So that's my assertion: Ben Stiller's good movie disappeared, while his bad movie was exalted. Shame on everyone.