Thank You for Smoking
Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Rated: NONE
Website: http://www2.foxsearchlight.com/thankyouforsmoking/
Release Date: 2006-04-07
Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Robert Duvall, Katie Holmes, William H. Macy, Sam Elliott
Director: Jason Reitman
Screenwriter: Jason Reitman, Christopher Buckley
Music Score: Rolfe Kent
WorkNameSort: Thank You for Smoking
Our Rating: 5.00

Being a smoker – either current or reformed – is a lot like being a tobacco-industry lobbyist. We both lie. We both rationalize. We both compare our situations to those of others, finding masochistic solace in the idea that we have it "toughest." There’s a crucial difference, though: Nobody has figured out a way to make smoking pay the mortgage. That’s the carrot on a stick that keeps smooth-talking lobbyist Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) shilling for Big Tobacky through most of Thank You for Smoking, a pitch-perfect lampoon not only of the nicotine industry but of a culture in which putting your personal ethics up for sale is the most tempting bad habit of all.

Adapted by Jason (son of Ivan) Reitman from Christopher (son of William) Buckley’s novel, the movie is a hilarious black comedy that does more damage to the legitimacy of the sound bite than a month of Meet the Press episodes. Naylor would give Tim Russert’s show a pass, anyway; he’s more interested in pleading his case on weekday gabfests, where his silver tongue turns the unlikely trick of making him seem more of a friend to this country’s prepubescent cancer sufferers than the health experts who are crusading on their behalf. He travels the country with a head full of "research" (all of it contracted by his masters in Winston-Salem), engaging tobacco’s foes in nonsense debates that showcase his clean-cut talent for clouding any issue with emotional rhetoric. Having attained the Washington ideal of existing beyond truth, Naylor knows that modern arguments are won not on facts but on vehement obfuscation. If you can’t defend yourself legitimately, you can call your opponent a litany of wonderful names and achieve roughly the same goal.

Smoking is a specimen I feared was all but extinct: a Movie of Our Times. It would be enough to merely accompany our smug antihero on his appointed rounds, feeling the frisson of recognition every time he inundates a studio audience or a congressional panel with more deftly flung bullhockey. But Buckley and Reitman up the ante by giving us an actual plot – a few of them, in fact. Having hit upon the idea of buttressing smoking’s public image by getting more movie actors to light up onscreen, Nick hashes out an agreement with a receptive studio exec (a terrific Rob Lowe). At the same time, he’s deflecting the attacks of a grandstanding Vermont senator (William H. Macy, perfectly at home in his socks and Birkenstocks) while carrying on an ill-advised affair with a newspaper reporter (Katie Holmes, in no way the kiss of death) whom the egotistical Nick somehow thinks he can trust.

Did I mention there’s a kid involved? As a divorced dad, Nick ends up hauling his son (Cameron Bright) around on some of his work-related excursions. Opportunities are thus copious for him to pour his noxious philosophy straight into the child’s open cranium; we soon realize we’re witnessing an ongoing battle for the little one’s soul. But don’t worry that the movie will go off the deep end with bathos. This is one of those responsible comedies (1980’s Used Cars, though far bawdier, was another) that focus on a malignant element of American life and then refuse to compromise its depiction. Our hero may win our sympathy at times, most of it backhanded (that moralizing senator is quite the hypocrite), but the movie never contends that a scumbag can totally change his spots. Nine years after In the Company of Men, Eckhart has found his second dream role, and it’s not as a character anyone will one day remember as "Nice" Nick Naylor. Who can afford nice when there are bills to pay?

This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2006.