Yeah I got A Thousand Words for you, buddy. Most of them are expletives. Does anybody remember the 80s? A big part of the cinematic 80s was Eddie Murphy taking a crappy idea and making something positive. Beverly Hills Cop and The Golden Child immediately come to mind. Now, we’re a full 180 degrees from that point: here’s a promising idea, and here’s Eddie Murphy to treat it like a toddler treats a sand castle.
Jack McCall (Eddie Murphy) is a high-powered literary agent. I guess by this we’re supposed to infer he has a way with words. Not much evidence is given on this count. For no concrete reason known to the audience, a tree suddenly appears in Jack’s back yard. The tree and Jack are mysteriously connected. Jack feels what the tree feels and as Jack speaks, the tree loses leaves, one for each word. Tree loses all its leaves = Jack dies. There’s your premise. Not sure I’m wild about the living metaphor. The non-evergreen trees I’m familiar with lose leaves all the time; doesn’t mean they’re dead or dying.
Jack combats this by restricting his word usage; oh, and he can’t write them, either. The tree even marked off points for a rude gesture, but is 
content with letting Eddie Murphy convey thoughts in charade and Pictionary form. Well, that just seems wrong. Why does he get to act out words he can’t write or say? Doesn’t it come to the same thing? Here, of course, is my big mistake; I’m trying to make sense of a movie in which Clark Duke (the poor man’s Jonah Hill) pulls an ethnic impression straight out of the blaxploitation era.
And A Thousand Words doesn’t lack for problems. On a philosophical level, Jack is a jerk. Why should the cosmos give a bandicoot’s gonads whether or not Jackass is on the right path? This plays a great deal like Liar Liar, except for the fact that Jim Carrey was likable and his truth telling yielded results more humorous than painful. Taking speech away from Eddie Murphy doesn’t make him funny the way it used to. A huge problem with the film is the frustration Jack’s wife and toddler have with his inability to speak. It’s big-time wrong. Jack wants to be a bachelor, but he isn’t one and taking away the power to speak to small child borders on cruelty. Not much better is his relationship to wife Caroline (Kerry Washington). At least she’s a grown-up. When her attempts to spice up their love-life lead to separation, we’re actually wondering, “why now?” Sure, he isn’t speaking, but at least he’s paying attention to you in this moment.
As somebody who grew up loving the oeuvre of Eddie Motormouth, his consistent dive into the pool of unworthiness is frustrating. He no longer seems to have any touch with comic timing or the common man. Here is a great gift for an actor – a script which requires no speech. This is the theme of our latest Best Picture. And here we are pretending a corporate guy can get away with Mr. T and Tickle-me-Elmo dolls speaking on his behalf. It’s not right and it’s not funny. Next time you try a project like this, Eddie, sit through, say, Ratatouille and take notes. Lots of them.
Rated PG-13, 91 Minutes
D: Brian Robbins
W: Steve Koren
Genre: Eddieschtick
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Perhaps someone on Death Row
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Mutes
