“A Thousand Words” Trailer: Eddie Murphy Has To Shut Up (No, Really, It’s The Plot of the Movie)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard that (a) Tower Heist director Brett Ratner has deemed that rehearsals are for gays only, (b) he resigned from producing the Oscars after word got out, and (c) Tower Heist star Eddie Murphy has dropped out of hosting the show maybe-possibly as a result.

So, um, yeah. It’s been a messy week in Hollywood.

Now who’s up for a trailer for an Eddie Murphy movie?! 

Wait!

Where are you going?

…please come back!

*ahem.* A Thousand Words stars Murphy as a literary agent who loves words–meaning he loves to talk. Books and gibber gabber! What a coincidence! Unfortunately, things take a turn for the unnerving (read: high-larious) when he makes a deal with some spiritual Deepak Chopra-type, and a bonsai tree suddenly pops up in his front yard. This begs the question, “How could that happen in an otherwise normal world?”, but unfortunately the trailer fails to answer it. Moving on!

Murphy learns that the tree only has 1,000 leaves on it, and each time he says a word, a leaf falls off. He only has 999 words left to speak before he dies! And he loves to talk! WHAT IS HE TO DO?!!! Well, in traditional Murphy fashion, he must come up with a new form of communication–mostly involving grunts, clapping, and other strange hand motions/noises.

The timing of this trailer is just awkward, and the movie doesn’t look too good, either. What a sad, sad time to be Eddie Murphy.

A Thousand Words hits theaters in–I don’t know. But it’s going to be in theaters sometime soon.

“21 Jump Street” Trailer: That Guy From “Step Up” and Jonah Hill Go Undercover!

Some of us may remember 21 Jump Street, the 80s crime TV show that helped launch the careers of Johnny Depp and–well, he’s pretty much it. The series was about a group of po-lice officers who had the good luck (or bad luck) to be able to pass as teenagers and solve crimes. Now the show is getting the big-screen treatment as Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill become our two main characters.

They play two gung-ho albeit inept cops who discover that their job isn’t as exciting as they had hoped. When they finally make their first bust but fail to comprehend the finer points of police procedure, Nick Offerman (of Parks and Recreation fame) tasks them to head out to 21 Jump Street, in which they’ll finally get to go undercover.

Their job: to pose as high school students and take down the dealer of a drug ring. Oh, and did I mention that Ice Cube is their captain at 21 Jump? Ice Cube. This just might redeem him for Are We There Yet? and Are We Done Yet?. Nobody mention those movies anymore.

21 Jump Street looks okay. The supporting cast (including the aforementioned Offerman, Cube, and also The Daily Show’s Rob Riggle) really seem to outshine Tatum and Hill in this trailer, so I’m hoping they have some good scenes on their own.

The movie hits theaters in March.

 

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” Trailer: Tilda Swinton Makes Shocked Faces! (Oscar-Worthy Shocked Faces)

The plot of We Need to Talk About Kevin is simple. John C. Reilly and Tilda Swinton raise a beautiful young boy named Kevin. Then he grows up and turns psycho.

Everyone’s talking about Tilda Swinton’s performance in this movie, and I have to agree, it looks like she’s going to do a great job. The trailer mostly shows us shocked faces, but I hope there’s more to it than that. This movie definitely looks interesting and intriguing, and I’d like to see how it all plays out.

We Need to Talk About Kevin hits theaters in February.