Murphy stars as a garrulous go-getter of any literary agent who clearly requires a cinematic lesson about modifying his priorities: He starts the picture barking demands into his cell phone, then grimacing when his or her wife (Kerry Wa) hands him the toddler. He fakes a call from a wife in labor in order to line-jump at Starbucks. He mistreats the small people in his living, like his harried helper (Clark Duke), who has to tweeze every one of the non-yellow-moon marshmallows out connected with his boss Lucky Charms. And above all, he talks an azure streak: In a typical little bit of let-me-spell-out-the-subtext dialogue, he announces to an employee meeting at his bureau, “This is what I! I can talk any person into anything! ”
Then, after he lies with a placid guru (Cliff Curtis) while disregarding a spiritual message in regards to the value of silence, Murphy becomes magically bonded to your tree, which sheds a leaf for each and every word he says. (Or writes, or even communicates; when he flips off the tree in anger, it drops two leaves to represent his “Fuck you. “) Once it loses all its leaves, Curtis says, it will no doubt die-and Murphy about it. In theory, the resulting enforced silence leads Murphy to recognise which words are truly important, and absorb the benefit of stillness and self-examination. In practice, he mostly learns that in case he doesnt constantly fill the oxygen with chatter, everyone around him-including Wa, Duke, his boss Allison Janney, Starbucks barista Jack “Kenneth the page” McBrayer, and others-will leap to the most idiotic conclusions imaginable as to what his huge gestures and silly faces making the effort to convey.
A Thousand Words possesses its roots in numerous redemption comedies where unnatural phenomena put cartoonishly awful people through comic hell to train them life lessons-Groundhog Day time, Scrooged, Freaky Friday and its many offshoots-but it most strongly resembles the 1997 Rick Carrey vehicle Liar Liar, in which a related paranormal contrivance prompts some goofy sincerity after about 80 minutes of particularly broad mugging and flailing. A Thousand Words is usually low-tech and highbrow simply by modern Murphy standards-no excess fat suits, no dual roles, very little crass sense of humor or CGI gimcrackery, and a protagonist thats partially more nuanced and less one-dimensional than for most such films. And while the closing is wretchedly fakey in addition to predictable, Murphy in subdued mode gives it a little authentic sweetness.
But robbing Murphy associated with his voice means replacing his most potent weapon-the charismatic blue-streak babble that made his name with comedy and in movies like 48 Hrs. and Beverly Hills Cop-with just one gag, repeated over and around. Murphy compensates by performing extra-super-hard, with his eyes pestering out and cords ranking out in his guitar neck as he attempts for making his frustration and misunderstandings as hilarious and obvious as possible. Meanwhile, director Brian Robbins (in whose last two movies, Norbit and Meet Dork, were also Murphy vehicles) achieves very same in obviousness by cutting back to leaves falling off of the tree practically every period Murphy speaks, in case someones forgotten about. They wont have. They couldnt possibly.