"The nail could actually cause her moments of wrath, rage and anger."
We all know about those rare films that are sent to the
graveyard in their post-production and are never seen again. These films are
often discarded before production can even begin, such as Tim Burton’s Superman
Lives, but once in a while a film is made nearly in its entirety and due to
either production issues or financial problems, they’re forgotten. But suppose
for a moment, that a film made primarily in 2007 was then revived 8 years after
the project began.
Alice (Jessica Biel) has a perfect life until a freak
accident leaves her with periods of erratic behaviour. Her fiancé calls off her
engagement and she loses her job, only to fall into the arms of congressman Howard
Birdwell (Jake Gyllenhaal) and together they launch a campaign for healthcare
reform.
This film started off as a David O Russel film called Nail
that was supposed to serve as a satire of the modern health care system in
America. Think along the lines of Silver Linings Playbook but for physical
disadvantages rather than the psychological ones that Bradley Cooper suffered
from in that movie. But of course production was postponed and despite the best
efforts to revive the project and get it into theatres Russell eventually
walked out in 2010 to focus on other projects, knowing that his doomed satire
was probably best left to die by this point.
But studio executives disagreed and now the reanimated
corpse of Russel’s film now titled Accidental Love is finally fit for viewing.
Accept it isn’t because it’s horrible in every conceivable way. Russel dodged a
bullet with this one, in fact I feel sorry for the director just because
firstly his name is still loosely attached to the monstrosity and secondly to
see a project that he must have cared about and been devoted to at some point,
one that he knew well enough to abandon rather than try to force it to live on
as a figment of what it could have been, had to see it turn into this.
Accidental Love is a mess of a film. Having been sewn
together from various pieces of footage seven years ago right up to a few
months prior to its release the stitches are clearly visible from a distance.
Up close you can see that there are still gaping holes within both the story
and character arcs as well as a plot that is completely and utterly
unfathomable.
You want to get deep into the films messages and what it is
trying to convey then fine. If it is trying to serve as a political satire then
there are elements to suggest that it is making the best efforts to do so,
there are ridiculous plot elements that may appear to be intended as a mockery
of politicians, but when a device like that is then overlooked numerous times,
treated as if it’s in normality and then undercut with terrible and heartless
rom-com clichés, then it loses its impact slightly. And by slightly I mean
totally, I mean like completely out the window of the Empire State Building.
What’s amazing is that the best performance of last year
came from Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler (I don’t care what the Oscars say, it was)
but here, wow he is either bored out of his mind or, given that it was seven
years ago, he has to be the most improved actor in recent memory. One wonders
of Russel was glad to be free of it as it looks as if it was doomed from that
start.
Where’s Nightcrawler, where’s Silver Linings Playbook? Why does this film
exist? These are questions that no one can really answer when watching
Accidental Love.
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