THE ENDEMIC corruption infecting US politics certainly needs exposing — and less charmingly so than when the likes of James Stewart sweetly savaged the political class in Mr Smith Goes to Washington. 

Accidental Love — in which small town Indiana waitress Alice Eckle (Jessica Biel) goes to Washington to find someone to pay for the surgical removal of the nail in her head and ends up addressing politicians, Stewart-style, in the Senate — isn’t that film. This aspirant comedy-satire is far less funny than the nail in her head. Dating from 2008, this disaster should have remained there or ended up as a late-night insult on Channel 4.

Instead, actors who must have prayed it would never get a screening are cruelly exposed attempting — and largely failing — to raise laughs from an increasingly desperate collection of clunky would-be comic scenes.Catherine Keener comes off best as bitchy conniving politician Pam Hendrickson, Jake Gyllenhaal overacts fit to bust and James Brolin is lucky to die on screen soon after his appearance.