Eddie Murphy film gets worst reviews ever

Eddie Murphy's new film A Thousand Words has been slated in America with headlines speculating whether it is 'the worst film of all time'.

Comedian Murphy, who turned 50 last April, made his name with films such as Beverly Hills Cop and voiced Donkey in the hugely popular Shrek films but his latest movie, filmed in 2008, is attracting damning verdicts.

On Rotten Tomatoes - the American review aggregator website - A Thousand Words has earned a 0 per cent rating (the percentage of critics who have given the film a positive review), based on 41 reviews. Few films have previously sunk that low - examples being Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio and Heather Graham's sex flop Killing Me Softly.

Murphy, who has made fine films in the past such as Trading Places, plays a vain, fast-talking literary agent called Jack McCall, who learns to love his family again thanks to humbling lessons dished out by a magic tree.

Michael Phillips in the LA Times wrote: "In A Thousand Words the camera stays about two inches from Murphy's hyperactive face, and you start to see the strain and desperation in the actor's eyes. Without saying a word, those reaction shots — the film is a 100-minute reaction shot unto itself - says: I am in trouble here, yet I remain a big bad wolf of comedy. I will huff and puff and get a laugh. Somehow."

I would say the remake of The Cat in the Hat is up there in the top 5. The only movie ever that actually made me physically angry. Just like Hollywood, they took a nice little fun story for children, and filled it full of vile sexual themes. And, the cat himself came across as ‘icky’, to me. It was weird in a deviant way and stupid. I hated it.

But, yeah, I think the whole Black shtick is losing steam. Remember Whoopi making all those movies where she was always the wise old owl, showing a bunch of stupid silly White girls the way of the world. Murphy was always the one-step-ahead streetwise cool-guy, who could go into any situation and come out perfectly groomed and on top with a couple of smart jokes. All, this stuff is just old these days. All the ‘angry Black comics’ are losing steam, that whole Black theme is just tired.

Chappelle hit it just right. Although almost everything he did was Black themed, his stuff was genuinely funny as he!! without all the in-your-face anger and prejudice. His stuff wasn't us-against-them humor, it wasn't we're smart and you are dumb, we are innocent and you are somehow guilty, is was more along the lines of, Black people are funny, White people are funny, everybody is funny, and we are all in this thing together. That is what made him great.

But I digress. I'm really just stalling because I have real work to do and I'm being lazy. Oh well, back at it...[sigh]

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