Metacritic reviews

If only this Eddie Murphy flick had taken its own advice and spent a little more time being reflective instead of hyperactive, it might have overcome a trite script and awful, obvious excuses for comedy.

Mostly harmless, but the largely joyless exercise is a letdown after getting a glimpse of a re-energized Murphy in "Tower Heist."

The director, Brian Robbins, perhaps as a result of his prime-time pedigree, has so carefully engineered this manipulative machine that little emotional residue remains - only a product inoffensive, unsurprising and uninspiring.

The poster art for A Thousand Words shows Eddie Murphy with duct tape over his mouth, which as a promotional idea ranks right up there with Fred Astaire in leg irons.

The concept is unoriginal, the scenarios aren't funny, and its message is banal. Plus, Murphy alternately hams it up and phones it in.

Alas, even Murphy's largely wordless, physically adroit performance can't redeem this tortured exercise in high-concept spiritualist hokum.

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.

This is the kind of colossally misguided vanity project.

While the ending is wretchedly fakey and predictable, Murphy in subdued mode gives it a little authentic sweetness.

For a comedy about the quest for inner peace, A Thousand Words reeks of desperation.