What makes it different from others?

One of the best films i have seen

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

I've enjoyed most of David O. Russell's movies and I know it's supposed to be screwball comedy and all, but this one had a few too many goofy, contrived plot twists for my taste—like when gay ATF agent Richard Jenkins impulsively decides to follow a guy he's never met before (and whose wife his committed gay partner's been flirting with) all the way to New Mexico to help him find his birth parents. I liked the scenes where Stiller and Téa Leoni get so wrapped up in each other that they start knocking over the furniture, but it didn't seem like Téa was really pulling her weight the rest of the time, and though I was impressed by the outside-the-box casting choice of MTM as the nudzhy Jewish mother, I was kind of hoping her character wouldn't show up again after the opening scenes. Finally, I couldn't really buy Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin as desert-rat drug dealers, though I enjoyed the antics of their sociopathic teenage son. I know Russell goes in for these big ensemble comedies with everybody yelling and carrying on, but this time, as with "Silver Linings Playbook" a few years back, it seemed like the plot was already spinning out of control with 20 or 30 frantic, not-sot-funny minutes left to go. Eight stars for the first 45′, four for the second.

Flirting with Disaster is a true companion to classic screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. Not too unlike Howard Hawk's Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday, David O. Russell's outrageous and often funny comedy takes its absurd and wild tone to the very end, seemingly slamming on the brakes just at the moment when we feel as if there is more to learn about these characters. This may be true but Russell's intention is to show us their behavior in this particular instance, that is finding Mel's (Ben Stiller) parents.Films like this depend almost entirely on the acting and writing for success. Fortunately, here they both are superb. The cast alone makes the film worth checking out. Stiller, Patricia Arquette, Tea Leoni, all the way down to Josh Brolin and Richard Jenkins as a couple of federal agents make their characters as weird, interesting and watchable as any comedy of the last 20 years. What also succeeds is the pacing of Russell's script, which is light on drama but moves at such a rampant speed that you barely have time to catch your breath in between jokes and situations. Needless to say, this film is a treasure. Not much more can be said without ruining the marvelous surprises and bizarre circumstances it has to lay out. All that is required is to turn off your conceptions of coincidence, realism and contrivance and simply enjoy a most enjoyable story about a man looking for identity and realizing perhaps he shouldn't have.

An adopted man goes searching for his birth parents. Hilarity ensues. Not really. Actually there are zero laughs for the first half hour or so. The first chuckle is supplied when Brolin enters the picture as a gay Federal agent. From that point, it becomes mildly amusing, thanks to a terrific cast. It's nice to see the likes of Moore, Segal, Tomlin, and Alda, although sexual scenes of these old-timers is the kind of imagery one does not want lingering in the mind. This film provided Stiller with a career template for playing neurotic men who keep encountering disaster, but the script here is not as witty and the plot not as engaging as some of his later efforts.

Absent since 2004's misbegotten "I Heart Huckabees", filmmaker David O. Russell made a ramshackle screwball farce back in 1996 that's well worth revisiting on DVD, at least until his next film comes along. He was able to blend character-driven humor with moments of pure slapstick as he tracks the misadventures of Mel Coplin, a neurotic entomologist on a frantic search for his birth parents to resolve his long-standing issues with identity. Tina Kalb, a leggy, off-kilter adoption agency worker thinks she's found Mel's mother in San Diego, so Mel, Tina, and Mel's sweetly frumpy wife Nancy, nursing their five-month baby, embark on a journey that becomes ever more haphazard with every turn of events. Unsurprisingly, an attraction develops between Mel and Tina, who is anxious to get pregnant herself. They meet a gallery of eccentric characters in what becomes a memorably wacky road trip. The real coup with this under-appreciated film is the casting. Long before he sold himself up the river with execrably witless comedies like "Meet the Fockers" and "The Heartbreak Kid", Ben Stiller was a promising actor of relative subtlety, and he expertly mans the rudder as Mel with his skittish self-containment. An actress who never seems to fulfill her potential, Téa Leoni brings a mix of klutziness and sexy smarts to the incompetent Tina. As Nancy, Patricia Arquette has a soft, fuzzy quality that makes a nice contrast to Leoni's angularity.Russell was smart to cast four veterans as Mel's two sets of parents. As his adoptive parents, George Segal and a cast-against-type Mary Tyler Moore are hilarious playing classic New York Jewish stereotypes. Moore, in particular, has a field day playing the obnoxious dark side of Rhoda Morgenstern rightfully proud of her unsagging breasts. As the couple who turn out to be Mel's real parents, Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin are equally funny as graying New Mexico hippies heavy into their art and LSD. When Mel meets them, that's when the film becomes a whirlwind, "Noises Off"-type of farce with all the personal shenanigans coming to a head. Playing a gay couple who happen to be FBI agents, a surprisingly deft Josh Brolin ("No Country for Old Men") and the always dependable Richard Jenkins (superb in this year's "The Visitor") shine as bickering personality opposites. Glenn Fitzgerald as Mel's psychotic brother and Celia Weston as a Reagan-loving Southern matron round out a razor-sharp cast. It all ends rather abruptly, but Russell shows a genuine talent for juggling a lot of comic possibilities with supple dexterity. The 2004 Collector's Edition DVD is light on extras - just three deleted scenes, a few outtakes that don't compare to the final film, and a brief featurette on the film's development and production.