Flirting with Disaster Movie Review

There's something about Ben Stiller in a movie that just makes me go AAARGH. He shows up in Reality Bites: AARGH. He shows up in this one: AARGH. He may be a terrific guy offscreen, but onscreen he reeks of Yuppieville. Maybe he should grow a beard. Get a growl in his voice. Anything to give him an edge. David O. Russell's movie has so many edges, you might think that one of them would rub off on Ben Stiller. But noooooo…. Luckily, Flirting with Disaster has a large cast. There's Patricia Arquette, who looks as young here as she looked old in Lost Highway. Josh Brolin (NOT Ben Stiller) licks her armpit. Amazing. There's Tea Leoni as a shrink. Sure. There's Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin as a hippie dippie couple; now, there's a concept. There's George Segal and Mary Tyler Moore, who are SO uptight you could market the both of them as slingshots. Russell talked Moore into a few underwear sequences. No comment. In spite of the overall weirdness, everyone acts as if everything is normal; Moore flosses her teeth and asks Segal, “Where's your sense of romance?” It's funny!

1995 (R) 92m/C 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. Nominations: Independent Spirit Awards ‘97: Best Director (Russell), Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Jenkins), Best Supporting Actress (Tomlin). VHS, LV, Closed Caption