Sunday, January 10, 2016

Podcast: Accidental Love (2015)




As part of Your Stupid Minds’ Worst of 2015 week, we have a single episode highlighting an appropriately forgotten lemon of the previous year. To call Accidental Love a 2015 film, however, is somewhat unfitting. Originally titled Nailed and helmed by prestige Oscar bait director David O. Russell, this film went through production hell following the recent 2008 financial crisis.

Filming proceeded from 2008 to 2010 with numerous stoppages (some say up to fourteen) due to lack of payment. Russell eventually left the project, and when the eventual rights holder decided to cobble it together into something resembling a film, David O. asked that his name be removed. Therefore the fictitious “Stephen Greene” is named as director.


Accidental Love is a high concept farce wherein Alice (Jessica Biel) is shot in the head with a nail gun as her boyfriend proposes to her at a local Indiana restaurant. When she is somehow refused treatment at the local hospital because she’s uninsured, she goes on a quest to Washington to seek universal healthcare. She sleeps with her representative in Congress Howard Birdwell (Jake Gyllenhaal) due to the nymphomania side effect of her injury, and then more things happen, some of which might be interpreted as jokes. Also starring Catherine Keener, James Marsden, Tracy Morgan, Kurt Fuller, Kirstie Alley, Bill Hader, Paul Reubens, and some other people.

Some Notes
  • James Caan left the project due to creative differences regarding his characters' death. James Brolin filled the role.
  • In an effort to trick people into thinking the movie might be good, the Canadian distributor misquoted the AV Club's A.A. Dowd. "[T]here’s little reason to believe that the ideal, untroubled version of the material would have been a comedic masterstroke" turned into "A comedic masterstroke."
  • Worst of 2015 lists are often do a poor job of representing bad movies. They usually opt to simply include mediocre films which underperformed financially. This list from Rolling Stone is particularly egregious and insulting to actually terrible movies.
  • And, because we will never forget, David O. Russell's masterful temper tantrum on the set of I Heart Huckabees.

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