Mel Coplin (Ben Stiller) is having a crisis after the birth of his son. He needs to find his biological parents. His horny wife Nancy (Patricia Arquette) wants to have sex. Tina Kalb (Téa Leoni) from the adoption agency finds his mother Valerie Swaney (Celia Weston) in San Diego and is willing to pay for the reunion as long as she films it for her doctoral research. His adoptive parents Pearl (Mary Tyler Moore) and Ed (George Segal) are weirdly inappropriate. Nancy is jealous of the flirting between Tina and Mel. They find out that Valerie isn't the mother after all. They track down their lowlife trucker father Fritz Boudreau. He points out that his father might actually be Richard Schlichting (Alan Alda). They run into Nancy's high school friend ATF agent Tony Kent (Josh Brolin) after Mel accidentally backs Fritz's truck into a post office. It turns out his ATF partner Paul Harmon (Richard Jenkins) is also his gay partner. Paul and Tony join them on their trip to New Mexico to meet Richard and Mary Schlichting (Lily Tomlin) who has a son Lonnie (Glenn Fitzgerald). It's sexual chaos as Mel flirts with Tina and Tony flirts with Nancy. That's before Lonnie accidentally put LSD on Paul's quail and the Coplins show up.
It's super quirky, sometimes funny, and always rambling. Mary Tyler Moore is especially funny. It's a messy human train wreck careening from one end of the country to the other. Writer/director David O. Russell has pull together a cast of crazy characters in a stew of chaos. The title may be referring to the film as much as the main character. It is on the edge of being a train wreck. The fact that this stays on tracks is a miracle. Ben Stiller isn't that funny although he's tasked with the straight man role. It tries so very hard but the jokes aren't always hitting. Maybe there are too many big characters in this madcap comedy. The craziness just overwhelms everything.
It's super quirky, sometimes funny, and always rambling. Mary Tyler Moore is especially funny. It's a messy human train wreck careening from one end of the country to the other. Writer/director David O. Russell has pull together a cast of crazy characters in a stew of chaos. The title may be referring to the film as much as the main character. It is on the edge of being a train wreck. The fact that this stays on tracks is a miracle. Ben Stiller isn't that funny although he's tasked with the straight man role. It tries so very hard but the jokes aren't always hitting. Maybe there are too many big characters in this madcap comedy. The craziness just overwhelms everything.