“I have a nail in my head so I need a Moon Base.” In the days before The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, David O Russell started shooting the healthcare satire Nailed (from Kristin Gore’s novel Sammy’s Hill), only to see the production shut down amid financial chaos. Now, seven years later, we have the retitled Accidental Love, completed (without Russell’s further input) under the pseudonymous director credit “Stephen Greene”.
Unsurprisingly, it’s a mess. Fleeting fragments hint at a superior work while others suggest it was a misfire from the outset. Jessica Biel is rollerskating Indiana waitress Alice who goes to Washington seeking help from congressman Howard Birdwell (Jake Gyllenhaal) following a medically uninsured accident. With a nail lodged in her skull causing mood swings and inhibition loss, Alice agrees to help Birdwell swing a lunar military base bill in return for legislation that will pay for her operation, and help with Tracy Morgan’s prolapsed ass and Kurt Fuller’s inflamed penis. Really.
Somewhere in the middle of it all there’s a screwball comedy about health versus defence budgets, of which only Catherine Keener has the measure as Bush-whacked house whip Pam Hendrickson. But with its grating comedic score and ill-judged bawdy farce, this toothless (and now outdated) shambles never gets beyond aggravating zaniness.
