Flirting with Disaster
A newly minted dad races across the country to uncover his adopted son’s birth parents, but a series of mistaken identities and overzealous ATF agents turn his earnest quest into a wild, farcical chase.
“A comedy about sex, love, family and other accidents waiting to happen.”
Synopsis
Mel Colpin, the new father of an adopted child, is determined to discover the identity of his son's birth parents before naming him. Accompanied by his wife, Nancy, and an adoption agent named Tina, who is described as both inept and attractive, Colpin embarks on a cross-country journey to track them down. What begins as a serious quest quickly turns into a chaotic farce filled with mistaken identities, wrong turns, and encounters with overly zealous and love-struck ATF agents.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 19
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Christopher TellefsenShot by Eric Alan EdwardsScored by Stephen EndelmanDesigned by Kevin Thompson
Box Office
1996 · Box office
⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 2.1× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$14.7M
Opening weekend: $164K — 1% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.
Peak 7 theaters
Also known as
- Ein Unheil kommt selten alleinde
- Flirting with Disaster – Ein Unheil kommt selten alleinde
- Liebe und andere Katastrophende
- Flirter avec les embrouillesfr
- Amori e disastriit
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Cast & Crew
19 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Ben Stiller
as Mel Coplin
Patricia Arquette
as Nancy Coplin
Tea Leoni
as Tina Kalb
Mary Tyler Moore
as Pearl Coplin
George Segal
as Ed Coplin
Alan Alda
as Richard Schlichting
George Segal Nm0001719
as Ed Coplin
Lily Tomlin
as Mary Schlichting
Richard Jenkins
as Paul Harmon
Josh Brolin
as Agent Tony Kent
Celia Weston
as Valerie Swaney
Directors
1Writers
1Producers
1Other crew
6Parents Guide
AI Personalities
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