Flirting With Disaster

Today we lost a true legend, Mary Tyler Moore. She earned her legendary status on the small screen starring in the classic sitcoms The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. But she also made quite an impression on the silver screen as well, showing her range in everything from heavy dramas, like Ordinary People, to silly comedies, like the Elvis Presley vehicle Change Of Habit. My favorite film performance of her's was in the David O'Russell 1996 comedy Flirting With Disaster.

Desperate to meet the birth parents who gave him up as a baby, new father Mel, Ben Stiller, enlists the aid of a scatterbrained adoption agency worker named Tina, Tea Leoni, to help him track them down. This comes much to the chagrin of his wife Nancy, Patricia Arquette, and his parents who adopted him, Tyler Moore and George Segal. When Tina thinks she has found Mel's birth mom, he goes to meet her with Nancy, Tina, and the baby in tow. But they soon discover that Tina has made a mistake, leading them on a cross country trek to track down his actual parents.

This a really funny film. Even though he has directed Oscar caliber films since, I think this is still O'Russell's best work. And the ensemble cast, that also includes Lily Tomlin, Alan Alda, Josh Brolin, Richard Jenkins, and David Patrick Kelly, is top notch. Supposedly Stiller and O'Russell bickered a lot while making this movie, which doesn't surprise me since he has butted heads with George Clooney and Tomlin on other projects.

Dick Van Dyke was the first pick to Tyler Moore's husband, which would have been a Dick Van Dyke Show reunion for the two. But he backed out. Another reunion was set to happen as well when Janeane Garofalo, Stiller's costar from The Ben Stiller Show, was approached to play Tina. She too passed.

Like I said earlier, this is a really funny and terrific little film. It's available on dvd.