Accidental Love(2015)

SHORT VERSION:
Despite having the help (and love) of Howard, as well as the support of the Girl Squaws and her friends Keyshawn, Rakeesha, and Reverend Norm, Alice’s mission to get an emergency healthcare bill implemented for all Americans ends in failure when Congress votes against it at their next session. Soon after, Howard appears to betray Alice when he first talks to Edwin (the chief of staff for his former boss, Pam Hendrickson [who was Alice’s biggest opponent]) one-on-one and tells him to tell Pam that he is sorry for going against her and the Republican Party, then announces to Congress and the press that it was a mistake for him to leave the Republicans and sponsor Alice’s bill and he is glad that it didn’t pass. He then asks for his colleagues to forgive him and let him back into the party, after which he vouches for Pam’s military moon base bill. Also, he proposes that another bill be put forth to rename the Congressional gym to the McCoy Memorial Gymnasium in honor of the late Speaker of the House, Jack McCoy (who was earlier killed by Pam when he tried to take credit for her moon base idea). Heartbroken by his apparent betrayal, Alice decides to return to Indiana.

As Alice is packing up her things in her motel room with the help of her friends, Keyshawn turns on the TV, and we see that it is airing a news program. The anchorman announces that, today, the McCoy Gymnasium bill turned into mayhem due to a surprise rider that Howard snuck into the bill: A version of the emergency healthcare bill. The anchor explains that this rider only provides for emergency healthcare for the types of accidents that Alice and her friends have suffered, and he adds that Howard’s sneaky act (which he pulled off with the help of Edwin, who saw Pam kill McCoy and told Howard about it during the conversation they had before partnering with him to introduce the gymnasium bill and sneak the healthcare rider into it as a means of punishing Pam for her actions) has earned him a triple censure and he is now expected to resign from Congress. He then talks to Howard live, and Howard tells the anchor that he doesn’t regret what he did and that he only pretended to betray Alice in order to get the job done. He then says that everything he did, he did for Alice and her dream, and he soon declares that he loves her. Then, when Howard confirms to the anchor that he is speaking to him from the parking lot of Alice’s motel, Alice runs outside and kisses him.

Off-screen, Alice and her friends all get their surgeries to fix their various problems, and we next see Keyshawn and Rakeesha getting married, with Norm officiating the ceremony and Alice and Howard serving as – respectively – the maid of honor and best man. We also find out that Keyshawn is now running for a seat in Congress himself.

LONG VERSION:
Howard (Jake Gyllenhaal) gets Alice (Jessica Biel) to appear at a media event for House Whip Pam Hendrickson’s (Catherine Keener) military moon base project, falsely promising to put a small rider for emergency healthcare into the moon base’s bill if she endorses the bill. The Girl Squaws, led by Marsha (Olivia Crocicchia), also attend the event to give the moon base bill their approval, having been falsely promised by Pam that she would get Shakira to come to their National Jamboree if they did so, and they also make a special edition cookie to sell that promotes the moon base. After the event, Howard enjoys some drinks with Alice, Reverend Norm (Kurt Fuller), Keyshawn (Tracy Morgan), and Rakeesha (Malinda Williams) in Alice’s motel room, and he soon receives a text message from someone on Pam’s staff telling him that there was a big poll bounce on funding the moon base, and Buck McCoy (James Brolin), the Speaker of the House of Representatives, wants credit for the idea, so Howard is to bring Alice to McCoy’s office tomorrow morning for a photo visit. Alice decides to do it, as well as bring her friends along to it. Later, Alice and Howard get to know each other better and have sex a second time (having had their first sexual encounter back when they first met [which caused her to experience her first orgasm] due to the nail in her head lowering her inhibitions), but this time, she is getting intimate with him because she genuinely wants to.

In McCoy’s office the next morning, McCoy meets with the Girl Squaws before Alice and company show up and eats one of their moon base cookies, plus he tells Pam that he is taking credit for her moon base idea, which greatly displeases her. Alice and her friends then arrive with Howard, but shortly after they get their picture taken with McCoy, Alice and the Girl Squaws find out that neither Pam nor Howard ever had any intention of honoring their ends of the deals they made with them. Before leaving the office with the other Girl Squaws that came here with her, Marsha tells Pam, Howard, and their squad that she will be holding a press conference telling everyone about how Congress lied to the Girl Squaws. Moments later, McCoy starts to choke on another moon base cookie he was eating, and after an attempt by Norm to give him the Heimlich maneuver fails, he falls to the floor. Howard takes out and plugs in a portable defibrillator to use on McCoy, and as he and Alice repeatedly zap him, Pam decides that this is a good opportunity to get rid of him, so she secretly unplugs the defibrillator with her foot, and McCoy ultimately dies. However, she is unaware that Edwin (Paul Reubens), her chief of staff, had witnessed her pulling the plug.

Alice attends McCoy’s funeral with Norm, Keyshawn, and Rakeesha, and back in Indiana, Alice’s ex-boyfriend, Scott (James Marsden), tunes in to the funeral on his TV and sees her there. He finds himself falling back in love with her again, and after he mentions this to Brenda (Jenny Gulley), a co-worker of Alice’s that he has started dating, she decides to ditch him. As Pam is rehearsing her eulogy to make it sound sincere, she notices that Alice and her friends are in attendance, so she orders Howard to go deal with them. Edwin then comes up to Pam and tells her that he saw her unplug the defibrillator, and she acknowledges that she did it but has no remorse about it, telling him that fate has given them a break. Meanwhile, Howard walks up to Alice’s pew and takes a seat next to her, but Alice orders him to get away from her because he lied to her. He admits to being deceitful, not understanding what he was doing, and getting caught up in the system, but he tells her that he has become genuinely inspired by her, and now, he might lose his job. He then offers to give her his Congress surgery voucher so she can get the nail taken out of her head, but Alice refuses, telling him that she won’t get it taken out until everyone else gets healthcare. Howard commends her dedication to her cause, but tells her that she will never get that bill passed until she is dead, either from the nail or from something else, and he has come to care about her a lot and doesn’t want to see her die. She tells him that there must be some way to get her goal accomplished or else her country sucks, but he firmly states to her that it is impossible to pull off unless something extremely dramatic occurs very soon. Inspired by these words, Alice proceeds to stand in the center aisle of the chapel and publicly praise McCoy, then hugs his widow and tells her that her husband changed her life and that she is now going to go up to the pulpit to tell the truth about him. She then proceeds to lie to the congregation by telling them that McCoy spoke his last words to her before he died, and he told her that they should just forget about the moon base and pass the emergency healthcare bill instead. McCoy’s widow then strengthens Alice’s lie by standing up and telling everyone that her husband was a big-hearted man and she knew that he always had it in him, and Alice lastly encourages the people to honor McCoy’s dying wish. Alice gets a standing ovation and starts getting interviewed by reporters on the scene, but Howard runs out of the chapel after he notices how angry that Pam now is.

Alice leaves the chapel moments later and finds Howard in one of the other rooms in the church, and after Howard commends her for being a fantastic liar, she says that he taught her how to lie to get what she wants, and they both tell each other that they think they love each other. Norm and Keyshawn then come in and praise Alice for what she did, and then Marsha enters, telling Alice that many people want to talk to her. However, she also tells Howard that Pam wants to see him, but in a bad and scary way. When Alice asks Howard why that is so, Howard explains to Alice that she just smacked down on the most important member of the House after they killed the other most important member of the House, and Pam is a take-no-prisoners type of woman who will stop at nothing to smear them across the floor. Alice and her friends declare that they are ready to fight her, but Howard basically shows them that he is too frightened of Pam to assist them with that, knowing that Pam will be out for his blood for going against her, their party, and everyone else who helped him get to where he is. Howard gets the window open and tells Alice that he needs to take some time to think about all of this somewhere else, but Alice objects, telling him that she needs him to both introduce her bill in the next session and stand by her. However, Howard’s cowardice is too strong, and all she and her friends can do is watch as he goes out the window and runs off for parts unknown.

The Girl Squaws throw their support behind Alice’s cause and publicly declare their moon base cookies to be hazardous, and together with Alice’s friends, they go on a serious campaign to get the healthcare bill introduced to Congress, which sees them putting out a viral video that speaks against the moon base as well as camping out on a lawn at the edge of the Potomac River, right across from the Capitol Building. However, Pam is equally determined to make sure that that bill doesn’t make it that far, so she first attacks the Girl Squaws by having poison oak sprayed on their encampment, then releases a smear video centered around a baseless claim that there is “child lesbianism” going on in the Girl Squaws while pretending that somebody else released that video. Lastly, she deals with any important people who might sponsor Alice’s bill by bribing them or intimidating them into backing off. At the encampment, Alice complains to Norm, Keyshawn, and Rakeesha about how Congress is now back but Howard isn’t, as well as how Pam has been impairing their efforts. She then asks Marsha if her trackers in the Girl Squaws have found anything on Howard, and she replies that they did pick up his trail through his credit card transactions, but they lost him in Virginia. Scott then suddenly appears, and he apologizes to Alice for breaking off their relationship before telling her that he wishes to reconcile with her. However, when he then brings up that the Harris polls are showing that she is dead even with the opposition, a confused Alice asks him how he knows about this because no one knows about tomorrow’s Harris numbers unless they are in Congress. She then asks him if somebody put him up to this to mess with her, and he claims that one of her spies in the Girl Squaws told him about the polls when he got here. However, one of said spies who overhears this yells to Alice that that is a lie, and Scott admits that Pam was the one who truly brought him here and that he was offered to be made post commander and have his entire squadron funded with equipment that they have been wanting for a while if he could just get Alice to come back home with him. She asks Scott about her injury and the people that she is trying to help, then asks him if he can think bigger than just himself, and he replies that he wants to be that kind of guy and restates that he wants her to give him another shot. He then asks her what she needs, and she tells him that she needs a sponsor for her law, but their only hope of introducing it has disappeared and his trail went cold in Virginia. After he gets Howard’s name from her, Scott promises to find him by using his position as a state trooper to call upon the aid of Virginia’s state troopers, and he does this under the assumption that, if he finds Howard, Alice will surely reconcile with him.

A day or two later, Scott finds out that Howard is deep in the Virginia wilderness attending a “men’s spiritual workshop,” where he is doing fire tests to regain his manhood. He manages to get Howard out of there and take him straight to the Girl Squaws’ encampment, just as Alice is announcing to the Squaws and her friends that she has accepted that their mission has failed. Scott brings Howard on stage, and Howard announces to everyone that he is resigning from the Republicans and running as an independent, and in Congress tomorrow, he will introduce the bill for basic emergency healthcare for all people. He then kisses Alice passionately, but Scott takes exception to this and punches him to the ground. He asks Alice if Howard is really her guy, and Alice tells him that Howard gave her her first orgasm, then admits that she manipulated him into finding and bringing Howard here, thinking that he wouldn’t do it if she told him that her heart now belonged to Howard. Scott responds to this by telling Alice that Howard is not a real man and will not be there for her, then walks away.

The next morning, Alice walks into Congress with Howard by her side and her friends, the Girl Squaws, and even Scott supporting her from the observation area above. Unfortunately, Alice finds out that her goal will be harder to accomplish than before because Pam has been promoted to acting Speaker of the House. After the session begins, Howard introduces the bill, but shortly afterwards, one of Pam’s team members, Bill (David Ramsey), enters the meeting hall with a file folder in his hand and announces that he has some important revelations that will affect the new bill. Pam reads the file and announces that, in the past, Howard separately promised two female lobbyists that he would introduce bills for them in exchange for sexual favors, and she accuses Howard of doing the same here with Alice. Howard denies it, but then the women enter the room, and they reveal that their bills were for things considered morally unacceptable. Howard tells everyone that his main goal was always to get funding for good school supplies for the schools in his district, but in order to be heard on that at all, he had to support these other bills that he hoped would go nowhere. After Howard is told that he is now facing a possible censure involving ethics charges, Alice – who has started to become dizzy from the nail in her head – asks for a chance to speak. Under pressure from the Congressmen to honor the promise that she made at the start of the session to be a fair Speaker, Pam decides to give Alice one minute to say what she has to say, and Alice tells the Congressmen that not everyone in America has excellent healthcare like they do here and that all Americans deserve it. She then faints from the pain caused by the nail, but the Congressmen applaud her, and then one of them demands a call for a vote. Pam is forced to allow it, but when the votes are counted, we find out that most of Congress has voted against the healthcare bill. Alice faints again, and as Pam comes up to Alice and pretends to show care and concern for her well-being in order to look good in front of the press, Edwin goes up to Howard and whispers something in his ear. Norm, Keyshawn, Rakeesha, Scott, and Marsha then show up and help lay Alice down on an empty bench.

As Alice’s friends console her, Rakeesha breaks up with Keyshawn over the fact that he admitted to having a “broken ass” (referring to his prolapsed anus) while saying something in defense of Alice a few minutes ago, which is something she considers a deal breaker. Shortly after Rakeesha walks away, Scott shows Alice that Howard is shaking hands with Edwin. Edwin then tells Pam and Bill that Howard is sorry for going against them and that he wants to rejoin the Republicans, and he is about to show them just how sorry he is. Howard proceeds to tell Congress and the press that it was a mistake for him to leave the party and sponsor Alice’s bill and he is thankful that it didn’t pass, and then he asks for his colleagues to forgive him and let him back into the party. He then vouches for the moon base, plus he also proposes that a bill be put forth to rename the Congressional gym to the McCoy Memorial Gymnasium. Heartbroken by his apparent betrayal, Alice decides to return to Indiana.

As Alice is getting her stuff ready with help from Norm, Keyshawn, and Scott, Keyshawn turns on the TV, and we see that it is airing a news program. The anchorman then announces that, today, the gymnasium bill turned into mayhem due to a surprise rider that Howard snuck into the bill: A version of the emergency healthcare bill. The anchorman then interviews Pam and asks her how she and other voting members did not even read the bill, and she replies that, while she did skim over it, she couldn’t read it all because bills contain a lot of paperwork, and she adds that Edwin usually carefully reviews bills for her. As she says this, Edwin appears behind her, and the facial expressions he gives to the camera indicate that, when he whispered to Howard, he must have told him that Pam was responsible for McCoy’s death, then decided to partner with him to introduce the gymnasium bill and sneak the healthcare rider into it so they could both stick it to Pam. The anchorman then clarifies that the rider only provides for emergency healthcare for the types of accidents that Alice and her friends have suffered, and Pam tells the anchorman that, while this rider has opened the door to a potential avalanche of “socialist medical spending,” she takes comfort in the fact that she still got the moon base bill passed. The anchorman informs the viewers that Howard’s sneakiness has earned him a triple censure and he is now expected to resign from Congress, after which he talks to Howard in another live interview. Howard tells the anchorman that he doesn’t regret what he did and that he only pretended to betray Alice in order to get the job done. He then says that, everything he did, he did for Alice and her dream, and he soon declares that he loves her. He then confirms to the anchorman that he is speaking to him from the parking lot of Alice’s motel, and upon hearing this, Alice runs outside and kisses him.

Off-screen, Alice and her friends all get their surgeries to fix their problems, and we next see that Keyshawn and Rakeesha have reconciled and are now getting married, with Norm officiating the ceremony and Alice and Howard serving as – respectively – the maid of honor and best man. Keyshawn is also now running for a seat in Congress, and Scott is in attendance with Brenda by his side, having gotten back together with her. The movie ends with everyone dancing happily at the reception, but when Howard decides to take a moment to propose marriage to Alice, his proposal is interrupted when Keyshawn pops open a bottle of champagne and the cork hits Alice in her left eye.