Pun Salad

Mrs. Salad wanted to see it, we got it from Netflix, had a few laughs. It's not as bad as everyone said. But it's still not very good.

Eddie Murphy plays Jack, a high-profile book agent pitching potential blockbusters to publishing houses. His new beautiful wife and cute son don't fit too well into his bachelor environment. His mom is in a home, keeps calling him by his father's name, and that only rankle's Jack's daddy issues.

But it all comes to a head when he tries to wangle a book out of a new age guru, who's all about Buddhist-style simplicity and honesty. Jack's bullshit is (apparently) too much for a nearby Bodhi tree; it transplants itself into Jack's backyard, and starts shedding one leaf for every word Jack speaks. Jack becomes convinced that when the tree runs out of leaves, his life will end.

You may recognize this genre: roughly, it's "supernatural forces make a the protagonist appreciate true values and redeem his life." (This movie's writer also wrote Click and Bruce Almighty. But also see Groundhog Day, Liar Liar, Scrooged, …)

In short, you've almost certainly already seen better versions of this movie. It bombed, and the studio seems to have figured out that it was a stinker: filmed in 2008, but not released until last year. But (on the other hand) Eddie Murphy is still pretty funny. But (on the third hand) he's funnier when he talks, and he shuts up for a lot of the movie.

Finally: it's rated PG-13, and (as the IMDB helpfully tallies) you can get away with "1 use of f***, abou 10 uses of s**t, 2 obscene hand gestures, 2 uses of d***head." (No, not "deadhead".) I'm kind of surprised at that.