VIDEO : ROMANTIC COMEDIES ON THE REBOUND.

Byline: Robert Bianco Special to the Daily News

It's nice to see Hollywood flirting with romantic comedies again.

Reinvigorated by the phenomenal success and pop impact of ``Sleepless in Seattle,'' the romantic comedy genre is in the midst of a renaissance. In video stores, you can find last year's hit ``The Truth About Cats & Dogs'' (FoxVideo; $14.95), a delightful mistaken-identity romance anchored by Janeane Garofalo as a completely enchanting '90s Cyrano. In theaters, you can still find ``Fools Rush In,'' a more modest but still enjoyable romantic vehicle for Salma Hayak and Matthew Perry - the first of the boy ``Friends'' to choose a feature wisely.

This week on video, we get what may be the funniest of the recent romances: writer-director David O. Russell's ``Flirting With Disaster'' (1996, Miramax; priced for rental). And, despite its unconventional structure, ``Flirting With Disaster'' is a romantic comedy at heart - even if that heart doesn't reveal itself until the end.

Like ``The Awful Truth,'' one of the genre's great classics, ``Flirting'' is the story of a couple whose seemingly perfect marriage is almost destroyed by a potentially fatal flaw: They don't realize how important they are to each other. In both movies, they flirt with other choices - but in true romantic comedy fashion, they come to their senses before the end credits.

The journey of marital discovery in ``Flirting'' takes place during a hilariously inept cross-country search for identity. Feeling estranged from his adoptive parents, Mel (Ben Stiller) leads his wife (Patricia Arquette), their as-yet-unnamed baby and a vampish adoption counselor (the wonderful Tea Leoni) on a hunt for his birth parents - which leads his wife to believe he might want a new spouse to complete his new family.

In classic comedy fashion, the search is disastrous in more ways than Mel or the audience could have imagined. His adoptive parents (hilariously played by Mary Tyler Moore and George Segal) are furious; his birth parents (equally well played by Lily Tomlin and Alan Alda) are historic curiosities.

Happily, everything works out for the best - and Mel even learns a valuable lesson in the bargain. ``Every marriage is vulnerable,'' he's told. ``Otherwise, being married wouldn't mean anything, would it?''

You don't get much more romantic than that.

Here are three other romantic married-couple comedies to round out the evening.

The Awful Truth: (1937, Columbia TriStar; $19.95): Talk about your vulnerable marriages. Irene Dunne and Cary Grant allow their marriage to collapse out of foolish pride, and then face the awful truth: They need each other. Before they can admit their mistake, however, they must subvert each other's rebound romances.

His Girl Friday: (1940, Congress; $9.95): Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are divorced when we meet them, but you know that won't last long. One of the funniest of all American comedies, ``His Girl Friday'' is also an ideal film to show to foreign visitors. In its smart-aleck confidence and brash disregard for bullies, it embodies what is unique and best about America.

The Palm Beach Story: (1942, Universal; $14.98): In this Preston Sturges farce, Claudette Colbert loves husband Joel McCrea, but is tired of poverty and afraid she's holding back his career. She decides to fix both problems at once by finding a new husband who is rich and who will bankroll McCrea's invention. This being a comedy, she gets everything she wants.

Elsewhere in video

Vertigo: (1958, Universal; $19.98), Alfred Hitchcock's seminal exploration of sexual obsession is a romance of a much darker kind. Luckily, thanks to a two-year restoration process, we're promised that we can now see and hear it more clearly than Hitchcock did himself. (The new version had a limited and acclaimed theatrical run last year.) This wide-screen video release comes with a 20-page explanatory booklet, the restored original trailer and a 30-minute behind-the-scenes documentary.

Two great actors, Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz, team for a small-scale adaptation of David Mamet's ``American Buffalo'' (1996, Evergreen; priced for rental). Anyone who loves theater should check it out.

You seldom find even one movie about art and artists on video, let alone two: ``Basquiat'' (1996, Miramax; priced for rental) and ``Surviving Picasso'' (1996, Warner; priced for rental) are both recently available on video. Despite the involvement of some big-name talents - Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman and David Bowie in ``Basquiat''; Anthony Hopkins, Joan Plowright and the Merchant-Ivory team in ``Picasso'' - neither film made much impact at the box office. But then, who thought they would?

On the other hand, a lot of people expected big box-office things from ``The Chamber'' (1996, Universal; priced for rental), which turned out to be author John Grisham's first movie flop. We'll see if Grisham's fans are more forthcoming on video.

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Photo

Photo: Tea Leoni plays a vampish adoption counselor in ``Flirting With Disaster.''