A Thousand Words

Eddie Murphy, of recent past, has taken his comedies to a much safer level. We can see this in the likes of "Meet Dave", "The Nutty Professor","Dr. Doolittle" and "Norbit". I don't really think it's a step down of what he can actually do, but with the aforementioned films, along with his most recent, "A Thousand Words", the scripts could be a bit more polished and tight.

After stretching the truth on a publishing deal with a spiritual guru, Dr. Sinja (Cliff Curtis), literary agent Jack McCall (Eddie Murphy) finds a bodhi tree that, all of a sudden, appears on his property. Legend has it that when one speaks, the tree loses a leaf for every word spoken, so the tree holds a valuable lesson on the consequences of every word we speak.
However, in this case, the legend actually comes true, because it happens to Jack. And what happens when most trees lose all their leaves? Yes, you guessed it, they die. So the same thing will most likely happen to Jack unless he gets all his ducks in a row, and quick! His likable, but ass-kissing assistant, Aaron Wiseberger (Clark Duke) tries to help him figure out what to do, but to no avail. How can a wise-cracking, self-absorbed agent going to do if he can't even speak?

This was adequately directed by Brian Robbins ("Varsity Blues" '99, "Hard Ball" '01, "The Perfect Score" '04, "The Shaggy Dog" '06, "Norbit" '07, "Meet Dave" '08). This guy has a tendency to lean toward fairly 'safe' projects, which he does well at, but it would be nice to see him go out on that limb at least once and try something different. It was equally written as well by Steve Koren ("A Night at the Roxbury" '98, "Superstar" '99, "Bruce Almighty" '03, "Click" '06,"Jack and Jill" '11). Again, this guy equally needs to branch out and try other projects he's not used to writing.

I don't know if this was an advocate for new-age philosophy or parodying it, but it does have a good message of reconnection and forgiveness as the film eventually unfolds. It's great for kids in that it does speak of forgiveness, but in an entertaining way. It's just too bad that Murphy has to get this message across in such an over-the-top way. But as with his other projects as mentioned above, the same message in that over-the-top way is played out. And this has a tendency to make these films quite similar, but nice try.

Out of 4 stars: 2.5                       Rated: PG-13                       91min.