1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 25: Flirting with disaster
Secrets & Lies, one of my favorite movies, is a profound and stirring drama about an adopted woman’s search for her birth parents.
But this review is about Flirting with Disaster. This movie depicts a young father’s search for his birth parents.
Flirting with Disaster is neither stirring nor profound. All it aspires to be is a very funny screwball comedy. (It does make this important point: we should do right by those near to us before we search for love further afield.)
The young father is played by Ben Stiller in nervous-wreck mode. In the aptly titled Meet the Parents (2000), Stiller plays a man who disastrously meets his girlfriend’s parents. In Flirting with Disaster, his character is still disastrously meeting his own parents. This he must do several times because he’s misinformed about who his parents are.
While he searches for his birth parents, he puts on hold the task of naming his infant son. His wife (the wonderful Patricia Arquette) patiently tags along while he tries to discover his identity. But her exasperation increases as his quest becomes tied up with feelings for his adoption caseworker (Téa Leoni), a person it’d be disastrous for anyone to get involved with.
The search takes the young family – as well as the caseworker, who insists on documenting everything – from New York to California to Michigan to New Mexico. Other hangers-on join in the young family’s quest. They all arrive at the birth parents’ house for the movie’s zany climax.
Every character, except the young mother played by Arquette, has a screw loose (or two, or three). The movie slyly paces its revelations of eccentricity. A character will seem reasonable enough at first; then, he’ll let out something a little strange; and by the end, it’ll be obvious that he’s cuckoo (or at least neurotic enough to need serious help). Some of these characters achieve at least partial redemption. Others are beyond the pale. The movie dispenses its justice according to the awfulness of each character’s choices, and each choice is carefully shown to spring out from a deep well of habit.
Here’s an example. A couple of the hangers-on are staunch advocates of staying at B&Bs. This gets everyone into trouble in New Mexico. On a desolate backroad, they discover that the B&B to which they’ve been heading has been closed down because of uranium poisoning.
B&B Advocate 1, holding up his B&B guidebook: “Maybe we should have sprung for the updated edition. The picture’s right here. It was a nice B&B.”
Young Father: “Yeah, they probably have something about the uranium contamination in the new edition.”
Adoption Caseworker: “Did it ever occur to you to call first?”
B&B Advocate 2: “Without spontaneity, the world of B&Bs is fairly meaningless.”
It sounds much funnier in the movie than it looks on the page. This is a testament to the acting, as well as to the intricacy of the plotting. This movie has been made with consummate skill.
And the best news is, Secrets & Lies does everything Flirting with Disaster does – only with greater skill and subtlety. I love Flirting with Disaster. But I can’t wait to review Secrets & Lies.
But this review is about Flirting with Disaster. This movie depicts a young father’s search for his birth parents.
Flirting with Disaster is neither stirring nor profound. All it aspires to be is a very funny screwball comedy. (It does make this important point: we should do right by those near to us before we search for love further afield.)
The young father is played by Ben Stiller in nervous-wreck mode. In the aptly titled Meet the Parents (2000), Stiller plays a man who disastrously meets his girlfriend’s parents. In Flirting with Disaster, his character is still disastrously meeting his own parents. This he must do several times because he’s misinformed about who his parents are.
While he searches for his birth parents, he puts on hold the task of naming his infant son. His wife (the wonderful Patricia Arquette) patiently tags along while he tries to discover his identity. But her exasperation increases as his quest becomes tied up with feelings for his adoption caseworker (Téa Leoni), a person it’d be disastrous for anyone to get involved with.
The search takes the young family – as well as the caseworker, who insists on documenting everything – from New York to California to Michigan to New Mexico. Other hangers-on join in the young family’s quest. They all arrive at the birth parents’ house for the movie’s zany climax.
Every character, except the young mother played by Arquette, has a screw loose (or two, or three). The movie slyly paces its revelations of eccentricity. A character will seem reasonable enough at first; then, he’ll let out something a little strange; and by the end, it’ll be obvious that he’s cuckoo (or at least neurotic enough to need serious help). Some of these characters achieve at least partial redemption. Others are beyond the pale. The movie dispenses its justice according to the awfulness of each character’s choices, and each choice is carefully shown to spring out from a deep well of habit.
Here’s an example. A couple of the hangers-on are staunch advocates of staying at B&Bs. This gets everyone into trouble in New Mexico. On a desolate backroad, they discover that the B&B to which they’ve been heading has been closed down because of uranium poisoning.
B&B Advocate 1, holding up his B&B guidebook: “Maybe we should have sprung for the updated edition. The picture’s right here. It was a nice B&B.”
Young Father: “Yeah, they probably have something about the uranium contamination in the new edition.”
Adoption Caseworker: “Did it ever occur to you to call first?”
B&B Advocate 2: “Without spontaneity, the world of B&Bs is fairly meaningless.”
It sounds much funnier in the movie than it looks on the page. This is a testament to the acting, as well as to the intricacy of the plotting. This movie has been made with consummate skill.
And the best news is, Secrets & Lies does everything Flirting with Disaster does – only with greater skill and subtlety. I love Flirting with Disaster. But I can’t wait to review Secrets & Lies.