Mel's 'Roots Thing'

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By Newsweek Editors

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DAVID O. RUSSELL'S "FLIRTING WITH Disaster" is a likable but overcrowded farce: he should have kicked some people off the plane before takeoff. Mel (Ben Stiller) is a neurotic New Yorker with psychic scars because he doesn't know who his biological parents are. He can't concentrate on sex with his wife, Nancy (Patricia Arquette, trying hard to seem ordinary and failing gorgeously). He can't even commit to a name for their new son. So with the help of a fetching social worker named Tina (Tea Leoni), Mel embarks on what his adoptive mother (Mary Tyler Moore) refers to, with a sneer, as "this 'Roots' thing." Ben, Nancy and Tina cruise across country, chasing false leads, contemplating adultery, crashing through a post of-rice in a semi and befriending a pair of bickering gay feds (Josh Brolin and a hilarious Richard Jenkins). "Flirting" comes to an antic climax in New Mexico, where Ben's biological parents ('60s refugees played by Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin) are in business making sheets of acid with Ronald Reagan's face on them. Soon, there's a lifeless body and folks on the run for Mexico.

The old pros cavort grandly. Moore even strips down to a black bra and panties, and rolls in bed with her husband (George Se-gal). Still, Russell, who directed the wonderfully weirdo incest comedy "Spanking the Monkey," has more balls in the air than he can juggle. His point is well taken: your parents will make you nuts, no matter who they are. But "Flirting" strains too hard for laughs. By the end, it's revving crazily, like a car in the wrong gear. Mel learns to relax. The movie never does.

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