"A Thousand Words" Review

    This movie refuses to let Eddie Murphy talk. That might be the stupidest thing I've heard in a while. This is A Thousand Words, I guess...

Also, isn't this one of the worst
poster you've ever seen?

    This movie sucks. Why on earth would you take one of the greatest comedic actors, known for his quick wit, and force him to stop talking? This movie could have been really good. Eddie Murphy is good in this. He's actually trying. So why does the director seem so intent on making this movie so painfully unfunny?

    The movie follows Jack McCall (Eddie Murphy). Jack is a fast-talking agent at a publishing house. Jack uses his way with words to always get what he wants, at the expensive of his assistant Aaron (Clark Duke) and his wife Caroline (Kerry Washington). Jack one day tries to sign famed religious figure Dr. Sinja (Cliff Curtis) into a book deal. Jack later on finds that a mysterious tree has sprouted in his backyard and that every time he's says a word, one of the leaves falls off the tree. Jack now has only a thousand words left before all the leaves fall off the tree and he dies. 

    

Eddie meats with his agent after filming
A Thousand Words.

    My question is this: Trees usually don't die after the loss all there leaves, so why would Jack? Also: What does the tree have to do with Dr. Sinja? Plus: How does this all work? And: Why did Dr. Sinja let Jack handle his book? On top of that: Why doesn't Murphy just pretend he's really sick? Furthermore: Why the hell did Eddie Murphy agree to do this?

   Sure, A Thousand Words isn't funny. For a comedy, that's bad, but that doesn't usually give it as low a score as this movie's gonna get. But when a comedy is not just unfunny, but painfully unfunny, a complete waste of a lot of promise and gives us a terrible story to boot, then it deserves it's low rating.

    Let's go into the painful unfunniness of this movie first. Murphy tries his hardest, but man does this movie literally give him nothing funny to say. In the whole 90-minute runtime, I laugh a total of 3 times. Not even laughed. I kinda chuckled. It's not that the movie doesn't make jokes. Oh, it makes jokes all right. But there horrible jokes. The whole movie can be summed up in the scene when the normally funny (And here downright awful) Clark Duke speaks for Murphy during a business meeting. Long story short: Duke is incredibly racist, and we're all supposed to laugh.

    Then, there's the waste of potential. They've got a great cast. Murphy, Duke, Washington, Curtis. All great actors. They are all reduced to making funny faces and hope they can make someone's week-old baby laugh. They story could have been funny too. "A hero that can't talk. Interesting" "He feels what ever happens to the tree. Clever." "He gets sicker the more leaves fall off the tree. Gee, I hope they don't forget about that one halfway through."

    Maybe the story would have worked better with more interesting characters. Every single character has a flaw that is near impossible to get over. Murphy can't freaking talk, so he's can't do much. Duke is trying way too hard and is the least-funny thing in this movie. And that's saying something. Curtis does absolutely nothing. And Washington is just a horrible person. You'd think that someone who supposedly loves Murphy's character enough to marry him and have his baby would actually get that there is something more going on with his not talking problem then just "He's a jerk".

Funniest thing to come out of this movie.

    A Thousand Words is so unfunny it's not even funny. Plus, the characters are awful, the story's a mess, the actors are all trying too hard and the director doesn't know what the hell he's doing. If a picture really is worth a thousands words, than A Thousand Words is one butt-ugly picture. One of the year's worst films.A Thousand Words gets 1 and a half stars out of 6.