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| A Thousand Words - 2012 |
Coming up next is 2012's "A Thousand Words", the story of a man who tells people what they want to hear, stretches the truth, and makes a mess of the words he uses. When his life becomes tied to the number of leaves on a tree, he must now carefully choose what he says or he could die as the last leaf falls.
The film's cast includes Eddie Murphy, Kerry Washington, Clark Duke, Cliff Curtis, Allison Janney, Ruby Dee, Jack McBrayer, Alain Chabat, Phil Reeves, and Justina Machado.
Jack McCall is a literary agent who uses words for a living. He tells people what they want to hear so that he can represent them. Usually it's a string of half-truths and outright lies.
His long-suffering assistant Aaron has to put up with a lot from Jack. "I finished picking out all the mini-marshmallows out of your cereal," says Aaron one morning. "All the mini-marshmallows?" asks Jack. "Except the yellow moons, obviously," replies Aaron.
One day, Jack gets the idea to represent Sinja, a popular spiritual guru, who has recently written a book. He presents the idea to his team and gets the go ahead from his boss to approach Sinja about a possible book deal.
Jack goes to one of Sinja's retreats and makes a mockery of the situation. While everyone else is chanting a mantra, Jack resorts to chanting a Michael Jackson song.
Sinja sees right through Jack. He agrees to allow Jack to represent him. Later on, Jack becomes very disappointed when the "book" is revealed to be only five pages. However, Sinja is poised to teach Jack a lesson he'll never forget.
On the home front, Jack is in a bad place with his wife, Caroline. He treats her like one of his clients, telling her things she wants to hear with no intention of following through.
That night, a strange tree appears in Jack's backyard. He goes out to inspect it and wonders how it got there.
Recognizing it as a tree from Sinja's garden, Jack has the guru come over to investigate.
They discover a remarkable thing. Every time Jack says a word, a leaf falls from the tree. Sinja tells Jack that once a tree loses all its leaves, it will die. Likewise, he needs to watch what he says, because his life is tied to the tree. Once the tree loses all of its leaves, Jack will perish.
Naturally, Jack wants to conserve as many words as he can, making ordering at Starbucks somewhat of a challenge.
When he gets to work, his boss tells him that a book deal has gone south, and he needs to get on the phone and make it right with the publisher. This throws him into a panic.
During the phone conference, Jack has to use a variety of toys with a vocal feature to get his message across. Funnily enough, he is successful.
His inability to communicate using his voice (or writing or hand gestures) causes him to get into some humorous situations.
His assistant Aaron tries his best to help him out, but Jack still can't discover how to make the leaves stop falling.
With just a handful left, Jack realizes that his life could very well come to an end far sooner than he hoped.
He takes some time for himself to get alone and just think. He thinks a lot about his dad.
A visit with his mother confirms that the relationship with his deceased father is the one that most needs fixing. Jack travels to his father's grave and says three words "I forgive you". With that, the last three leaves fall from the tree, and Jack collapses.
However, a change has taken place within Jack, and he doesn't die, nor does the tree. In fact, the tree becomes healthy again, and so does Jack.
He even writes a book about his experiences, with a forward by his (now) good friend Sinja.
Jack decides to make a change in his marriage. He actually starts listening to his wife, and they move into a house that she's fallen in love with. And Jack has the tree from Sinja's garden dug up and moved to his new home.
Cast rundown:
Eddie Murphy..............................Jack McCall
Kerry Washington........................Caroline McCall
Clark Duke.................................Aaron Wiseberger
Cliff Curtis..................................Dr. Sinja
Allison Janney.............................Samantha Davis
Ruby Dee...................................Annie McCall
Jack McBrayer.............................Starbucks' Barista
Alain Chabat..............................Christian Leger de la Touffe
Phil Reeves................................Don Parker
Justina Machado.........................Caroline's Friend
And that's it for A Thousand Words. Originally filmed in 2008, the movie's release was delayed because of the separation of the movie studio that made it. In 2011, reshoots were made, however, it was not released until the spring of 2012. By that time, audiences found the jokes to be out of date, amongst other things. As a result, the film flopped at the box office.
