“A Thousand Words” Holds a Heartwarming Lesson

What if you were told that you only had a thousand words left to speak before you died? What would you do?

Well, that’s the predicament that Eddie Murphy’s character, Jack McCall, is faced with in A Thousand Words.

I enjoy most of Eddie Murphy’s movies, so when I found this on the shelf at my local library, I decided to check it out. My husband is out of town on business so I figured I’d take some time to watch a “heartwarming and hilarious” movie (according to Shawn Edwards of FOX-TV).

I don’t know what I was expecting from this movie, but what I got was a funny movie with a great lesson!

According to IMDb, A Thousand Words is about literary agent Jack McCall who, after stretching the truth on a deal with a spiritual guru, McCall finds a Bodhi tree on his property. Its appearance holds a valuable lesson on the consequences of every word we speak.

Cliff Curtis plays Dr. Sinja, a New Age spiritual guru who agrees to let Jack McCall be his literary agent.

Jack McCall quickly realizes that with every word he speaks, a leaf falls of the tree. So he has to come up with some creative ways to communicate with his boss Samantha Davis (played by Allison Janney), his assistant, Aaron Wiseberger (played by Clark Duke), with his wife, Caroline (played by Kerry Washington), and with his mother, Annie McCall (played by Ruby Dee).

Jack’s assistant Aaron tries his hardest to stop Jack McCall from uttering another word by knocking him out and duck-taping his mouth shut. Later Jack realizes that Aaron was only helping him and so Jack set about making the most of the last few leaves on the tree.

In the end, Jack McCall showed his love to his wife and son, speaking only a few words to them before he visited with his mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. With every previous visit to his mother, she kept calling him by his father’s name, Raymond. In their last visit, his mother rants at Jack thinking he is Raymond, saying that she wishes Jack would stop being angry at his father for walking out on them when he was a kid.

Jack then realizes that it is his relationship with his deceased father that needed the most mending. While at his father’s grave, it appears Jack suffered a heart attack and appeared to have died.

I won’t give out the ending, in case you want to watch the movie yourself. Just know that it starts going down one path but ends up on a completely different path. That’s not a bad thing, but some reviewers might harp on the inconsistency in the tone of the movie.

What started out as slapstick humor turned to a heartwarming lesson in life and love.

Have you seen A Thousand Words? If so, then I’d love to hear your thoughts on this movie.

Have a great day!