Rating of
1.5/4
Great message, really bad movie.
MikePA - wrote on 07/04/12
A Thousand Words is a boring, stupid, and abominably unfunny mess that feels more and more agonizing to sit through as the it progresses through its ungodly 91 minutes. I've never seen stupid of such a high magnitude - A Thousand Words almost reaches it. It's somewhat of a shame to have such a great and important message presented in a movie that's so bad.
A man (Eddie Murphy) learns he only has a thousand words left to say before he dies. A tree represents Eddie Murphy's character, so every time he says a word, a leaf falls from the tree. Also, if someone hits the tree with something, Eddie Murphy's character feels the pain. Or if the tree gets sprinkled with water, Eddie Murphy begins to sweat. All of this ridiculous playfulness showcasing Eddie Murphy basically playing charades with all of the other characters eventually leads to a climax that's supposed to be dramatic and emotional. It pretty much fails.
Let's be honest, the simple premise is just awful. Was there actually a person out there somewhere who wrote this thing down on a piece of paper, and some idiot ACTUALLY said, "let's make this movie!" And the casting crew somehow got Eddie Murphy to play the lead role!? Here's the thing about Eddie Murphy - Eddie is a talented guy. He really is. He can be likable, funny, and sort of awesome, but to see the poor guy in crap like A Thousand Words is almost insulting.
The script is so hopeless, and the characters are dumber than a toothpick. The movie's big joke is supposed to be that Eddie Murphy can't verbally communicate with people, so he must use silly little actions to get his point across. Hysterical. But what the filmmakers don't seem to get through their small brains is that it's Eddie Murphy's brilliant comedy voice that makes him so funny. And I want to add that if this film was G-rated and aimed at little kids, that would be passable. But this is a PG-13 film, which clearly means it's goal is to make people of all ages laugh. Nice try, but it's not gonna work.
And, of course, toward the end the movie gets all serious and dramatic and we're supposed to feel sorrow for Eddie Murphy's character because he only has like 10 words left to say before he dies (!!!!). Like, are we actually supposed to take a movie with a premise so poisonously stupid so seriously? I think not.
1.5/4 (Skip It)
