The defence The Popcorn Loyalist
“It owes the canon nothing.”
The movie pursues immediacy and audience pleasure without begging institutions to certify its worth.
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Flirting with Disaster
Comedy · 1996
Adopted as a child, new father Mel Colpin decides he cannot name his son until he knows his birth parents, and determines to make a cross-country quest to find them. Accompanied by his wife, Nancy, and an inept yet gorgeous adoption agent, Tina, he departs on an epic road trip that quickly devolves into a farce of mistaken identities, wrong turns, and overzealous and love-struck ATF agents.
Movie details
Flirting with Disaster
“A comedy about sex, love, family and other accidents waiting to happen.”
1996 Comedy 1h 33m
Critical arithmetic
The consensus, allegedly.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
IMDb
6.7 / 10
20.5K votes
Rotten Tomatoes
88 %
Tomatometer
Metacritic
82 / 100
Metascore
TMDB
6.2 / 10
Community rating
External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.
Adopted as a child, new father Mel Colpin decides he cannot name his son until he knows his birth parents, and determines to make a cross-country quest to find them. Accompanied by his wife, Nancy, and an inept yet gorgeous adoption agent, Tina, he departs on an epic road trip that quickly devolves into a farce of mistaken identities, wrong turns, and overzealous and love-struck ATF agents.
CriticWise case file
What this film says about your taste.
Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.
The archetype split
Who fights over Flirting with Disaster?
For the defence
The Popcorn Loyalist
“Big screen, big feelings, no apologies.”
Read their case For the prosecution
The Big-Idea Head
“You watch with your brain, not your gut.”
Read their objectionThe split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.
Taste neighbourhood
Nearby on the taste map.
TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.
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Where it lives
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Names above the title
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
David O. Russell
Written by
David O. Russell
Ben Stiller
Mel Coplin
Patricia Arquette
Nancy Coplin
Téa Leoni
Tina Kalb
Mary Tyler Moore
Pearl Coplin
George Segal
Ed Coplin
Alan Alda
Richard Schlichting
Lily Tomlin
Mary Schlichting
Court is in session
Put Flirting with Disaster on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
The prosecution The Big-Idea Head
“Easy pleasure, short half-life.”
It moves efficiently through the moment but offers little reason to keep arguing once the credits end.