Accidental Love Review

Shot in 2008 under the title Nailed, halted repeatedly when the financing ran dry, abandoned by David O. Russell before an ending existed, then assembled years later by the money people from whatever footage they had: that history is not an excuse for the thing on screen, it is the thing on screen. Scenes stop rather than end. Characters cross a room and arrive in a different movie. Jessica Biel plays a waitress with a nail in her head, a premise that could carry satire about American health coverage and instead carries a run of loud bits about sudden lust.

Gyllenhaal, as the congressman, pitches at the volume of a man trying to rescue a scene from inside it, and you can watch him choosing exaggeration because nothing around him has a floor. Catherine Keener finds a few dry readings as the committee chair and seems to be the only person who knew what tone was intended. James Marsden and Tracy Morgan simply flail. Lighting shifts between adjacent shots, library music patches over missing transitions, and the political jokes concern an argument that was settled long before anybody saw this.