Blu-ray review: 'Accidental Love' - David O. Russell's lost movie with Jessica Biel, Jake Gyllenhaal

It’s really strange to see an unfinished film or any unfinished piece of work. The audience is left only to wonder “what if” while watching it and also wondering why we get to see it at all. Some unfinished work should just never be made available for public consumption and that includes David O. Russell’s Nailed.

Retitled Accidental Love and apparently finished without his consent, the movie started filming in 2008, four years after Russell’s I Heart Huckabees was released. Despite the talent he gathered for the project - including Jessica Biel and Jake Gyllenhaal - it was never fully funded. He officially quit the film in 2010 to focus on The Fighter, which instantly revitalized his career.

Considering he was about to make a turning point in his career, Accidental Love feels like a hodge-podge of ideas on how he wanted his career to go. On one hand, it still has the zaniness and biting satire of Huckabees and Flirting With Disaster, while it also tries to create an enjoyable love story similar to Silver Linings Playbook. This proves to be disastrous though, as the two don’t mix. It only convinces us that Russell took an even bigger leap forward when he made The Fighter.

Biel stars as Alice, a waitress who is dating Indiana State Trooper Scott (James Marsden). When Scott goes to the local fancy restaurant to propose, a construction worker shoots off a nail gun. The nail goes right into her head, but she doesn’t have insurance, so she can’t get the emergency surgery she needs. Scott abandons her. She then sees that her Congressman Howard Bickell (Gyllenhaal) on TV and decides to head to Washington DC to get his help to pass a healthcare bill. She is joined by Rev. Norm (Kurt Fuller), who took one too many Viagras, and Keyshawn (Tracy Morgan), who has his own butt issues.

Once she gets to Washington, though, she learns that Howard is a weasel freshman Congressman, who has trouble with Rep. Pam Hendrickson (Catherine Keener) and her assistant Edwin (Paul Reubens).

While the plot should have resulted in an interesting movie, despite its contrivances and ill-conceived nods to Capra, the execution of the movie is completely baffling. In the first half, there are countless scenes where the camera is askew, making you have to tilt your head to watch.

In addition, there’s uncomfortable, sloppy cuts throughout. The music sounds like it came from a temp track. And let’s not forget how awful the nail scene actually looks. Whoever put this cut together even put the credits over important scenes early in the movie. (We should also note that the House chamber does not have desks! That’s the Senate! How did no one notice that?)

Accidental Love also comes just before Russell became a really good actor’s director. It would be great for him to work with Gyllenhaal again, since Gyllenhaal doesn’t really belong in a comedy like this. Biel is actually pretty good and some of the other cameos are pretty funny. But Marsden is annoying and Keener just isn’t doing her best.

Russell’s name is not on the cut release. Instead, Millennium Entertainment slapped the name Stephen Greene on there. The Blu-ray features no bonus material at all, of course, since everyone involved wouldn’t want to even know that it was released at all.

If you really want to see Accidental Love, wait until it pops up on Netflix. But even then, it’s really not worth 100 minutes of your life.

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