Flirting with Disaster

FLIRTING WITH DISASTER is madcap, wacky, and very funny. The characters come close to the line of caricature but don't step over it, and the supporting cast, including Lily Tomlin and Alan Alda as Mel's birth parents, and Mary Tyler Moore and George Segal as his adoptive ones, is outstanding. Everyone here feels like a real person who happens to end up in a series of very weird and very entertaining situations, including: a truck collision involving a pair of anti-Semites, an Indian-wrestling incident in the home of a Ronald Reagan supporter who (briefly) is convinced she's Mel's mom, a lover's spat between two men who aren't sure they want to be parents together, a series of potential extra-marital encounters that seem triggered more by ennui than attraction, and an unexpected LSD trip.

After all the shenanigans, what we are left with is simply this: making your own family, and keeping it together, is more important than any link that is just genetics. That, and pay attention to what you eat when the chef is also a slightly unhinged drug manufacturer with sibling rivalry issues.