"A Thousand Words could be the biggest movie of 2012. What's that, you ask? Isn't that title supposed to go to ethat movie where Loki is going to steal every scene he's in, especially when he's going up against the intensely exasperating guy in the metal suit played by Robert Downey, Jr? Or, no, wait a minute, the biggest movie of 2012 is certainly going to be the one where Tom Hardy and Christian Bale battle to see who can speak the most unintelligibly, right?
Maybe.
But wouldn't you consider a non-animated movie starring Eddie Murphy that is actually funny to be big news? Of course, it is too early to tell and all we have to go by is the trailer, but from what appears in that trailer, "A Thousand Words" has the potential to be the funniest Eddie Murphy movie since, well, since who can remember the last non-animated Eddie Murphy movie that was funny?
"A Thousand Words" features Eddie Murphy as a literary agent and it is not asking too much to suspect that the part may first have been offered to Jim Carrey. Murphy's Jack McCall is a character with Jim Carrey written all over it: self-involved, callous toward others, as ambitiously oblivious to the needs of others over the needs of himself as Mitt Romney and, yes, funny. The opening scene of the trailer for "A Thousand Words: tells us that Jack McCall would-and this is important-say anything to get what he desires. What he desires in that scene is to get in and out of a Starbucks quickly despite the long line. The methodology: fake a cell phone call in which his wife is having a baby right that moment.
The fact that Eddie Murphy's character will "say anything" proves to be thematic foil to his narrative. Promises to a spiritual guru on the issue of a book deal result in a Bodhi tree miraculously appearing in his yard. Murphy learns that every time he says something, a leaf falls from the tree. Only when there are just a thousand leaves left does he learn that once the last leaf has fallen…he will die.
The subsequent scenes in the trailer for "A Thousand Words" present Eddie Murphy being placed in a series of situations ranging from the domestic to the professional in which he must choose carefully when to speak or how to speak or if to speak or how to get his message across without speaking at all. The result is the first trailer for an Eddie Murphy movie you can watch in recent memory without wishing for your own Bodhi tree to rise from the ground with just one leaf hanging. What you get in the trailer for "A Thousand Words" is Eddie Murphy doing physical comedy at a level not seen since Ronnie Raygun was in office. "
Charmaine Blake loves movies, musical theater listening to music and taking pictures of anything that she finds interesting. She is a voracious reader and writer, and enjoys her time writing for New Movie Launches. Charmaine loves spending time with her pets and currently has a Siberian Husky, a toy poodle and a cat.
Charmaine Blake
