Thank You for Smoking

You'll need to inhale, then exhale slowly and relax before plunging into the world of Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), lobbyist and bag man for the Tobacco Industry. The laughs are some of the best abdominal exercise I've ever had at the movies. Thank You for Smoking is far and away the best satire to come out of Hollywood in years. The last attempt I remember was WAG THE DOG. This film is far better at true satire, its wit biting do-gooders and do-badders alike. It has been too long since Satire and the Politically Incorrect Sense of Humor have been allowed to point out the absurd in all sides of an issue. If you don't laugh out loud, your sense of humor has become a casualty of malpractice by the Doctors of Spin and the Nursemaids of Political Correctness.

Young Jason Reitman's direction and screenplay are deft and light. He is never heavy-handed, or worse, condescending (as may have happened more than once in WAG THE DOG). Based on a novel by Christopher Buckley (the son of William F. Buckley), the script is the star here. The double, triple, and sometimes quadruple entendres are spoken conversationally by a star-studded ensemble cast, who clearly revel in great material and great lines. Every reviewer opines that this will be Aaron Eckhart's break-out role. With his Dudley-Do-Right face and "that guy who always gets the girl----- on crack" charm and glibness, his Nick Naylor is the ultimate purveyor of the spin doctor's prescription: "the means justify the end".

The casting director should be congratulated in the same breath as the director. Rob Lowe as the "genius" behind Hollywood "EGO", a consultant firm which helps raise financing for movies with strategic product placement, is note-perfect in a "small role". With William H. Macy, the Vermont Senator who takes on the tobacco industry, Maria Bello, a fellow Merchant of Death lobbyist, and Robert Duvall, the "Captain" of this particular industry--- the cast is jaw-dropping, and sublimely funny. Katie Holmes, pre-TomKat, is gorgeous, seductive, and completely believable as the reporter who stops at nothing to get her story.

Nick Naylor's relationship with his son is the lens which focuses Nick on his own behavior. Even that relationship is not treated as a cliché, or completely reverently by the satirist, who remains true to the last frame to the goal of letting the air out of our self-righteousness. It is a breath of fresh air. I not only recommend it, I intend to see it again.

Jason Reitman's 'Thank You For Smoking' is a remarkable satire about successful 'B***S***ting'. Oh the things one can get away with, the things one can turn around and twist just through words, charisma and a smile. All the characters are/were hypocrites. Even in the relationship between Nick and his son, we see how his own traits brush off on his son. Not only that, he teaches his own son how to get away with things just by using words. Reitman's execution and screenplay are very intriguing. He uses clever humour and the lines spoken by the actors are absurdly amazing and hilarious. The multiple meanings of the lines particularly stand-out. Also, Reitman's intentions in making this successful satire seem very genuine as the film is not pretentious nor condescending (as is the case with many of the so-called recent satires). There's a stellar cast of which all the actors (except Katie Holmes) naturally fit their parts. Aaron Eckhart carries the film. It's difficult to describe his performance in words as the actor seems to pulls it off with ease. Nick Naylor was meant for him. Acclaimed actors like William Huffman Macy, Maria Bello, Rob Lowe and Robert Duvall all do nothing short of excellence in their acting. Even Adam Brody provokes laughter. Katie Holmes is the weakest link but this can be easily overlooked as she's not there for long and the other actors compensate enough. The cinematography and background score are very effective and the visuals are impressive. The sepia tone and brightness gives the feeling of a classic movie where things are positively exaggerated. While some people find the film offensive because they think it promotes smoking but 'Thank You For Smoking' is not really about smoking. It's pretty much about politics. Political Incorrectness. I'll be watching this movie again because it deserves so.

The chief spokesperson and lobbyist Nick Taylor (Aaron Eckhart) is the Vice-President of the Academy of Tobacco Studies. He is talented in speaking and spins argument to defend the cigarette industry in the most difficult situations. His best friends are Polly Bailey (Maria Bello) that works in the Moderation Council in alcohol business, and Bobby Jay Bliss (David Koechner) of the gun business own advisory group SAFETY. They frequently meet each other in a bar and they self-entitle the Mod Squad a.k.a. Merchants of Death, disputing which industry has killed more people. Nick's greatest enemy is Vermont's Senator Ortolan Finistirre (William H. Macy), who defends in the Senate the use a skull and crossed bones in the cigarette packs. Nick's son Joey Naylor (Cameron Bright) lives with his mother, and has the chance to know his father in a business trip. When the ambitious reporter Heather Holloway (Katie Holmes) betrays Nick disclosing confidences he had in bed with her, his life turns upside-down. But Nick is good in what he does for the mortgage.

"Thank you for Smoking" is a great politically incorrect movie, that satirizes the phobia against smokers and cigarette industry. Aaron Eckhart is simply awesome in the role of a man that has argument and is good in talking. The witty screenplay is original, using cynical lines and amoral characters. I quited smoking almost twenty-five years ago, and I do not like smokers and cigarettes, but Nick Taylor is amazing spinning the truth to defend the cigarette industry to pay his mortgage. Like said in "An Inconvenient Truth": "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it". My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Obrigado Por Fumar" ("Thank you for Smoking")

EDITED to omit reported 'spoilers'. And by spoilers I don't mean the "Bruce Willis is dead" type, but "Bruce Willis is bald" types. *sigh*

Some jobs are harder than others but Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), tobacco industry spokesman, handles his with effortless skill. Along with two other spokespeople for the alcohol- and firearms industry respectively, he is part of the self-appointed M.O.D. squad ("Merchants of Death") whose main objective is to talk. To BS. To spin. To confuse and convince their opponent, and charm their audience. A job of such nature naturally requires a certain moral flexibility, and with smooth-talk and sex appeal, it is apparent that Nick is incredibly gifted in this area.

He goes on TV-shows, verbally battles U.S. senators, deems the Cancer Research Foundation "arseholes" – all the while trying to set an example for his 10-year-old son. This is naturally very difficult, doing what he does. So as Big Tobacco (for whom he is a lobbyist) launches a campaign to reinstate the "cool smoking" image into mainstream Hollywood, and sends Nick to work a producer for the proper product-placement, Nick decides to bring his son along for the ride, to see "how daddy works" in hopes to bond with him.

Good satires are hard to come by, but Reitman's "Thank You For Smoking" is so wet with sarcasm and dripping with humour that it is impossible not to enjoy. It navigates the fast-paced industry, the art of talking and spoofs the anti-smoking camp with their chiché "cancer-sick boy in a wheelchair" front (as seen in the opening scene of the film), and it explores the moral flexibility of Americans, without preaching too much in doing so. Only once does it fall prey to predictable moral messages, as when Nick starts reevaluating his work and has moral qualms following his kidnapping by an anti-smoking group, only to swoop down into tongue-and-cheek mode again and return twice as biting – and twice as funny.

Although the film is evenly peppered with fun one-liners and perfect delivery from its cast, the best scene is when the M.O.D. squad are at their usual restaurant hang-out at the end of the day and brag to each other and argue over whose business kills the most people per year. Nick: "How many alcohol-related deaths per day? 100,000? That's what... 270 a day? Wow. 270 people, tragedy. Excuse me if I don't exactly see terrorists getting excited about kidnapping anyone from the alcohol-industry." Maria Bello who plays the detached, funny Moderate Spokeswoman for alcohol has great in-your-face aptitude and attitude, "That's stupid arguing." Aaron Eckhart is also hilarious throughout in a shady businessman way (I now have a major crush on him). Out of all the cast, only Nick's little kid Joe chokes on the well-written lines.

In fact, even the cinematography is well-crafted in the film... just the way a scene cuts to another deserves credit, opening with a rapid-fire ironic note. Speaking of which, "Thank You"'s opening montage of cigarette packages as credits is a stroke of genius on Reitman's part. So are the various casting choices – the amount of respected actors that have been crammed into supporting roles in impressive (Robert Duvall, Sam Elliot, William H. Macy) and give rise to an almost familiar and "feel-good" tone in the film.

That said, I wouldn't call this "laugh-out-loud worthy" exactly and I didn't care for the ending but it is clear that a lot of thought has been put into Thank You For Smoking – every line is a well-articulated kick up the arse to something and delivered by the bucket-load. A very enjoyable little satire.

8 out of 10

A clever satire of the spin-world (thanks largely to its cast and a witty script by Jason Reitman), Thank You For Smoking comes on like Wag the Dog via The Insider – it's a painfully honest insight into the tobacco industry, led by the narration of Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), the Big Tobacco corporation's chief spokesman. His narcissistic self-infatuation ("Charles Manson kills people; I talk.") and sleazy tactics land him in trouble when he finds himself bribing a lung cancer victim in front of his pre-teen son, who is not yet old enough to smoke but is being influenced by his money-driven father.

Nick has a lot on his mind. He's got pressure from an anti-smoking Senator (played brilliantly by William H. Macy), his boss, his ex-wife, fanatical groups on homicidal missions, a double-crossing reporter (Katie Holmes) and a Hollywood producer (Rob Lowe) trying to cast the perfect Hollywood glamorization of smoking (Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones are offered as the leads).

The movie, directed by the son of Ivan Reitman (the "Ghosbusters" director/producer extraordinaire), balances absurdity with realism; moments of the film come across as poignant reflection while following scenes are completely the opposite. This balance is thrown off a bit sometimes – David Koechner's portrayal of an NRA lobbyist is great but feels out of place, as if it belongs in a comedy in the vein of "Anchorman." And ultimately this uneven mix of the deadly serious (literally) with off-the-wall gags does catch up with the film; it eventually falls back upon its very strong script, which supports it (a lesser film might be affected more drastically with a weaker screenplay), but some scenes probably should have been toned down a bit to comply with the subtler and more realistic scenes. For what it's worth, the wacky scenes are extremely hilarious, but they seem to contradict other portions of the material.

Jason is a better director than his father, though, and shows a lot of potential here: I'd say the direction is almost deserving of a more serious film. I'd love to see what he could do with a drama in the future.

The movie also boasts an excellent lead performance by Aaron Eckhart, who oozes with sleaze, greed, corruption and a hidden sense of morals. He knows what he is doing is wrong, but he's not a stereotypical Hollywood motion picture "good guy" – even the closing of the picture, without spoiling it, isn't the moralistic cop-out I had expected; the movie isn't a black-and-white painting of the smoking controversy; it doesn't take sides on either side of the debate.

This is really being marketed incorrectly as the next "40-Year-Old Virgin" right now, but the film – for the most part, anyway – really isn't as hilarious as it is thought-provoking and engaging. Apart from a few aforementioned moments of utter absurdity, the majority of the film's duration involves some pretty serious topics, and it handles them well. It's not a bust-your-gut-funny movie, and it's perhaps not as strong as some reviews would lead you to believe, but it's one of the better satires in recent memory and certainly one of the more effective since Wag the Dog.