Big-shot publisher Jack McCall (Eddie Murphy) makes a questionable choice signing a book deal with a meditation guru, Sinja (Cliff Curtis), and a tree pops up his backyard (literally), shedding its leaves with each word Jack speaks; he is the tree, slowly dying. Of all A Thousand Words’s flaws, this is its loudest; the karmic lesson is convoluted and Sinja’s own ethics are unclear. Confusing and boring as it is, it’s not offensive, perhaps to a fault (no real boundary-pushing here)—you hold out hope Murphy has some funny left in him, but he provides only one, maybe two, laughable moments (including a two-minute sequence in which he’s accidentally stoned at a business meeting). Instead of pursuing greater lessons about how to live a righteous life, Murphy should stick to rubber-faced humour, though at this point, his heyday is well over.
This article appears in Mar 15-21, 2012.