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Is Eddie Murphy's A Thousand Words the worst-reviewed film ever?

High concept comedy has had no positive write-ups anywhere in the world so far, according to review site Rotten Tomatoes

Eddie Murphy’s latest film ‘A Thousand Words’ may well be the worst movie ever made if review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes is to be believed.

The film currently has a score of 0 per cent on the site, which is used to gauge the overall feeling from critics towards any given film. Such a score is almost unheard of for mainstream Hollywood fare.

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Forty one reviews - from newspaper critics to respected bloggers - all came back negative, making it one of the worst reviewed films of all time.



‘A Thousand Words’ tells the story of Murphy’s loud-mouthed literary agent whose fate becomes intertwined with a magical Bodhi tree that appears in his garden. With each word he speaks another leaf falls off the tree - meaning the pair inch closer to doom... for some reason.

Claudia Puig of USA Today said: “The concept is unoriginal, the scenarios aren't funny, and its message is banal. Plus, Murphy alternately hams it up and phones it in.”

The Hollywood Reporter reckoned Murphy should "have said 'no' to this tired, formulaic comedy".

Writing in The New Yorker, Andy Webster said: "its execution demonstrates how technical efficiency can drain the life from a story."

Trade bible Variety labelled it a "tortured exercise in high-concept spiritualist hokum".

And finally, Brian Tallerico of HollywoodChicago.com said: “Only the most masochistic connoisseurs of the truly awful need check it out.”

For comparison's sake, ‘The Adventures of Pluto Nash’, another Eddie Murphy-starring candidate for the title of ‘Worst Movie Ever’, has a 6 per cent score and ‘Norbit’, another candidate starring Murphy in a fat suit as a woman has a score of 9 per cent.

Murphy's latest has so far made £6.2 million in the US and will be released in the UK on 6 April.