Same old story in A Thousand Words

Who's in it? Eddie Murphy, Allison Janney, Kerry Washington, Clark Duke The plot This film feels like every other Eddie Murphy movie you've seen in the past decade (bring back the genius we saw in Coming To America!) In fact, it's from the same director who brought us Norbit and Meet Dave, so you can imagine it's a piece of cinematic genius... Telling the story of fast-talking literary agent, McCall (Murphy), who tries to rope New Age guru, Dr Sinja, into a lucrative book deal when, for some unknown reason, the guru puts a tree in the backyard of the agent's house and says that for every word McCall speaks or writes the tree will lose a leaf; meaning that when the tree becomes bare he will perish! Odd, yes, but Eddie Murphy goes for it, throwing himself into all the gags - the main problem, however, is that Murphy is funny because of his fast-talking nature. Take that away and he's just a bit annoying.