Customer Reviews

Thank You for Smoking (Full Screen Edition)

5 star:		(83)
4 star:		(75)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Thank You For Smoking is one of those few dark comedies that truly had me laughing all the way; and I can't remember how long it's been since I laughed so much watching a movie! The lines are funny; the acting is convincing and the movie manages to make a great point about "spin" (aka bulls***) in today's world.

The action begins with tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) appearing on a talk show to put a spin on the fact the smoking causes cancer. Nick, smirking all the way, says that the tobacco companies want a boy with cancer to live so they could keep another customer. Nick argues further that health officials would love to see the young "cancer boy" die so their budgets would be fatter. This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks; Nick goes through his whole life putting a spin on tobacco to make it seem safe, romantic and glorious.

Nick's partners in crime include two people he meets for lunch from time to time; and they call themselves "The Mod Squad." Look for great performances by Maria Bello as Polly Bailey and David Koechner as Bobby Jay Bliss who work for the alcohol and gun lobbies respectively. Nick's slave driving boss, B.R. (J.K. Simmons) puts in a great performance and the head honcho of the tobacco group, simply referred to as "Captain," is played wonderfully by Robert Duvall.

Nick's personal life isn't peachy--he's separated from his wife. When a seductive female reporter Heather Holloway (Katie Holmes) gets the real scoop on Nick's secrets and lets it all out in a tell-all article in a prominent Washington, D.C. newspaper, Nick's world comes crashing down around him.

Will Nick be able to bounce back from the negative publicity he gets? Will he keep his friends and his job? What will his young, impressionable son Joey (Cameron Bright) think of him when the whole truth comes out? Watch the movie to find out these answers and more, folks--there are no spoilers here!

The DVD comes with a plethora of extras. We get an interview with Aaron Eckhart and others on The Charlie Rose Show; there are quite a few deleted scenes with optional director's commentary; there's a brief "making of" featurette; a director and cast commentary; storyboard and more! I am very impressed.

Overall, I would highly recommend Thank You For Smoking for people who enjoy indie movies that are really funny and try to playfully make a point at the same time. You'll notice that no one in the film is ever filmed smoking a cigarette! However, this is not a family movie; there is a fair amount of swearing and there are some violent scenes that could upset small children. (The kidnapping scene is one of them; but I won't say much more to save the juicy plot for you.)

Now THAT'S what I call a great flick!

To be brief, Thank You for Smoking is one of my favorite movies in recent years. It's witty and smart without being a movie that you need to set out too much time for, given that its runtime is a mere 92 minutes.

While it is brief and inviting to pick up and watch, it does have a serious touch of satire in it, providing a critique of modern day society's overall standards and morals. In one scene in particular Nick Naylor, the main character, talks to his son in a way that makes his job appear even noble, while protecting corporations that claim thousands of lives each year.

Overall, without getting too technical: at LEAST rent this if you like satires, but if you enjoy sarcastic wit and humor, the odds are in favor of a purchase.

Nick Naylor: Right there, looking into Joey's eyes, it all came back in a rush. Why I do what I do. Defending the defenseless, protecting the disenfranchised corporations that have been abandoned by their very own consumers: the logger, the sweatshop foreman, the oil driller, the land mine developer, the baby seal poacher...
Polly Bailey: Baby seal poacher?

Dr Spin meets Dr Alcohol and Dr Gun, three spin doctors, 'MOD Squad' (Merchants of Death), who meet weekly to discuss their woes, a support group of sorts. Aaron Eckhart as Nick Naylor is the Dr of Nicotine, spinning the web for his company. He is good at what he does, and what he does is talk> He can spin anything. "It's really about the Age of Spin, where with the right TV spokesperson even Adolph Hitler might come off as a misunderstood individual." Christopher Buckley wrote the novel, and irony outdoes irony in this flick. What greater good for mankind than to lobby for the cigarette industry, of which up to 1200 Americans die daily.

The supporting cast is fabulous. Kim Dickens is his ex-wife, who is trying to protect their son, played by Cameron Bright, from the evils of Dr Spin. Nick Naylor is led by something other than common sense when he takes up with a writer/reporter, Katie Holmes. He spills his secrets which are duly reported. Nick's boss, Robert Duvall, wants him to go to Hollywood and engage the Hollywood crowd in smoking in the movies for big money. He meets 'The Marlboro Man' and soon the man has taken his money. Nick takes his son to Hollywood and does his job. He meets super agent Rob Lowe, who is very funny in this movie and disguised as an Asian soothsayer. All the while Nick is trying to show his son that you can do this kind of job and maintains a semblance of order. A kidnapping and court appearance showcase Nick Naylor's expertise. Aaron Eckhart is a smooth charming character and delivers this film. In the end, however, Nick Naylor pays the right price.

"Another plus: Ethics never get in the way of the jokes. Both sides of the political fence will feel royally skewered. All that's lacking is a warning from the Surgeon General: This film will make you laugh till it hurts." Peter Travers

This is a laugh out loud film if you are rooting for Nick Naylor. The tobacco business does not take the fall, all corporations and spin misters are involved. Highly recommended. prisrob 11/26.06

I tend to be hard on a lot of major motion pictures because, to be frank, they mostly suck. However, this only turned into a "major motion picture" after Fox Searchlight bought it after it's screening at the Sundance Film Festival. Before that it was the vision of fledgling director Jason Reitman to independently bring Christopher Buckley's tremendously smart and funny book of the same name to the screen... and he does a good job. There's a reason why this film is loaded with the (mostly unpaid or underpaid) who's who of Hollywood talent. The script and screenplay are that good. This is not the typical low-brow, fart-joke riden crap you're used to seeing out of Hollywood. There are good acting performances throughout as well. If you are a person of above average wit and have a dry sense of humor, you'll like it.

I found Thank You For Smoking funny, clever, interesting, and
generally entertaining. But I'd rather talk about what I didn't like
about it.

One might think, from some of the publicity, that the film is a
satiric sermon against the ability of lobbyists for big business to
spin public opinion however they want. In fact, the movie, based on a
novel by former Bush I speechwriter Christopher Buckley, is something
of a tribute to the unsung work of the lobbyists.

The hero is Nick Naylor, hired gun for the tobacco industry. We see
him plotting to reglamorize cigarettes in movies, boasting to his
friends about how many people cigarettes kill, brow-beating a little
girl about smoking, etc. Some reviewers have taken these to be signs
of a liberal agenda against big tobacco or big business, but the whole
logic of the movie works the other way. This is all part of Nick's
job, and his job isn't so bad because really Nick is a good guy.

How do we know he's a good guy? Well, first of all, he has a nice,
friendly smile. The actor (Aaron Eckhart) even mentioned (on the
Charlie Rose show) that the director kept telling him to smile more.
Naylor has two close lobbyist friends who stick with him even after he
nearly destroys their careers through his own carelessness. He smiles
because he enjoys his job and he is so good at it. He is also a great
dad, struggling to stay connected to his son. And you immediately see
that his curmugeonly old boss down in North Carolina is a good guy too
despite his stream of amoral rhetoric.

These nice industry flacks contrast with the sad liberals around them.
Naylor's uptight ex-wife tries to keep him from his son. A nasty,
sanctimonious congressman and the congressman's fawning, whining aid
keep losing debates with Naylor. There is even some Hispanic guy who
testifies in favor of skull-and-crossbones labels on cigarettes
because written warnings discriminate against people who can't read
English. Ha ha, political correctness is everywhere, next thing you
know some bleeding heart will claim tobacco companies are targetting
poorer and less educated people...

Naylor even gets to earnestly lecture his son on how it's an essential
part of our freedom as Americans to have lobbyists defend cigarettes
(and by extension, environmental destruction, animal cruelty, and any
other nasty things that make money).

How much you swallow Naylor's argument on his own behalf depends on
your politics. If you think that big business in the United States is
too restrained by government regulation, I guess Naylor can be your
hero. If you're more worried about, say lead poisoning from
underinspected toys or mistreatment of low wage workers or bad air
quality from coal plants, then your sympathy for tobacco lobbyists and
the like may be somewhat more limited.

In either case, it's nice to be aware of the point of view a movie is
selling. This movie inserts a pro-greed point of view so subtly and
persuasively that it would surely make Nick Naylor himself proud.

This is a wag-the-dog satire, with a sly humor that is not put into films these days. The narration is used with percision when describing the horrid position the protagonist, Nick Naylor, occupies lobbying for virtually all tobacco industries. The one-liners between people like the MOD squad, Merchants of Death, comprising of Nick himself, the lobbyist for firearms, and the lobbyist for alcohol, made me giggle like a little school girl. The only thing that keeps this movie from getting five stars is that it seemed to end abruptly. I wanted more!

George S. Kaufman once said, "Satire is what closes on Saturday night," and Hollywood has pretty much heeded that advice ever since. There are few political satires that come out of La-La Land, and even fewer--"Dr. Strangelove" comes to mind--that are commercially successful. This is why Jason Reitman's "Thank You for Smoking," based on the novel by Christopher Buckley, is so welcome. Particularly in today's poisonous political atmosphere, it is wonderful and refreshing to see a movie that is so clever, so witty, and so worldly-wise about America's true national sport--spin-doctoring--and how all sides play it to their advantage. Aaron Eckhart is wonderfully sleazy as Nick Naylor, a hired gun for the tobacco industry who delights in unleashing his brilliant verbiage in the service of making anti-smoking advocates look like the Gestapo. Only occasionally--such as when he's with his young son (Cameron Bright)--does Nick feel any twinges of conscience about using his talents in order to persuade people to suck poison down their lungs. But then again, Nick is positively cuddly compared with some of his adversaries, such as backstabbing reporter Heather Hathaway (Katie Holmes) and self-righteous Vermont Senator Ortolan Finistirre (William H. Macy), whose crunchy-granola politics mask the heart of a ruthless political hatchetman. "Thank You for Smoking" is stuffed with excellent comic performances, including Maria Bello and David Koechner as Nick's fellow spin doctors in the alcohol and firearms industries; J.K. Simmons as Nick's treacherous, blowhard boss; Rob Lowe and Adam Brody as a couple of flaky, motormouthed Hollywood egomaniacs; and especially the great Robert Duvall as "The Colonel," a courtly throwback to the time when Big Tobacco was King. For lovers of cinematic sarcasm, "Thank You for Smoking" is a welcome breath of smoky, mentholated, nicotine-tinged air.

Here's a good example of how smart, literary satire doesn't translate well onto the screen. Thank You For Smoking does have some big laughs, but it just doesn't hang together as a movie. The titles are extremely good - and it does contain one high concept joke - no one is actually ever seen smoking a cigarette throughout the entire picture. But film is a "show me don't tell me" medium, and Nick's tiresome monologues, required to set up point of view and plot turns, show the fingerprints of a director with young and heavy hands.

What this film does get right is the pitch; cynicism is rampant and shows up consistently, there are no heroes. Robe Lowe is perfectly cast as the completely soul-less super-agent, and the brief moments his assistant spends on screen are memorable. The reliable Sam Elliott is note perfect - his moral outrage quivers visibly with the proximity of cash. Robert Duvall, who by now could mail in a performance like this, is very comfortable as the "Captain" - tobacco industry ruler - and even seems to exhibit some remorse at the idea of killing his grand-daughter. J.K. Simmons - a consistently excellent actor - is outstanding as BR, our protagonist's ruthless boss who pretty much epitomizes opportunism. Katie Holmes as Heather Holloway is enchanting as she steals our hope that the fourth estate might be on a morally higher plane than everyone else in the miasma.

The kidnapping episode, the book's lynch pin, is used, but abused, it seems to drop out of the air then conveniently disappear. But that's not the film's overriding problem. Aaron Eckhart as Nick is winning, but completely uninteresting. Any engaging substance this film might have generated would have come from Nick's personality, and inner struggle with the facile way he bends truth. Since we never see anything remotely resembling a personality, we can't like him or dislike him, we just look at him as a hideous reflection of what we've become, a symbol of the manipulative and disingenuous forces surrounding us. For Nick, and for everyone here, truth isn't even an issue anymore; the issue is, what is sell-able? It's an accurate social observation that would have made a good essay, did make a good book, and didn't make a good movie.

The fact that this film saw the light of day in our society where smoking more and more becomes somewhat a taboo is already a miracle and a merit of its creators. This movie should have been done especially after Michael Mann's The Insider, just to show us the "other side", to hear arguments of the people who have a right to be heard as everyone else in any free country. And in its cynicism and recklessness Thank You For Smoking came out to be extremely ruffian-like and hilarious as for example People VS Larry Flynt or Private Parts. You can't resist admiring this picture as girls usually can't resist bad guys' charm. What's even more preposterous and outrageous, but inevitable I guess, is that you feel empathy for Aaron Eckhart's character, a character who earns money by persuading people into smoking, who profits from others' misery if you will. You like his character. I just loved him! He is smart enough to prove his point even if he's wrong, more than that - he's smart enough to persuade people to do something they absolutely don't need to do. He's the ultimate puppeteer, a Dr. Evil. You'll ask how it is possible to admire such person? But see, he doesn't put cigarettes into anyone's mouth, people do it themselves, and only they are to blame. We usually tend to blame everyone else in our misfortune, but it's us and only us who is responsible. I smoke myself, but if I get ill of it I'll never start blaming a tobacco industry - I have my own head on my shoulders to make decisions. In another words if people are fools it's nobody's fault except their own. And if you can manupulate people with a spoken word you're a genious, and I personally admire such persons. And this film is not about proving the point that smoking is good, Aaron Eckhart's character says himself he doesn't think smoking is good, he just thinks everybody is entitled to his own opinion and has a right to share it with others. It's parents' and schools' business to educate and teach to distinguish right from wrong.

There was only one thing that seemed strange at first glance in this film. Just imagine - it's a movie about smoking, but there's no single person smoking on screen throughout the entire picture! Was that an attempt to make the flick politically correct or director Jason Reitman's deliberate concept? I think it's rather the second, and if it's really like this it's extremely funny. I also had a feeling about the film trying to seem politically correct, when Aaron Eckhart's character quit his job as a tobacco lobbyist in the end. But moments later we see him explaining to some executives in a mobile phones company there is no evidence phones cause brain tumor. Long live the cynicism!

Jason Reitman may have gotten into movies via nepotism (his dad is Ivan Retiman of "Ghostbusters" fame), but with "Thank You for Smoking," he proves that he belongs in the game. This is one of the smartest, funniest satires in years.

Two things make the movie work. The first is Reitman's restraint. This is a movie about smoking, and yet we don't get any of the obvious scenes of people miserably puffing away on cigarettes, slowly killing themselves for our amusement. Instead, nobody really smokes in the movie - the best humor in this situation, lies in America's hypocrisy about smoking rather than the act of smoking itself.

"Thank You For Smoking" examines the ludicrous truth that one of America's most profitable industries essentially kills 1,200 people a day. And why does it do so? For several reasons, but mainly because Americans are sheep willing to be sheared, so long as we are told what we want to hear.

Enter Nick Naylor, played perfectly by Aaron Eckhart ("In the Company of Men," "Erin Brockavich"). Naylor is head spokesman for the tobacco industry, and he was born to do it. The self-proclaimed Michael Jordan of spin can go onto a TV talk show, face an audience of sanctimonious nitwits who want nothing more than to boo the evil tobacco industry, and walk off the stage having received the handshake of a teenaged lung cancer victim and also having created the impression that the tobacco industry cares more about its customers' lives than the public interest groups who merely want a martyr.

Naylor is riding high, and becomes the heir apparent to the Colonel (Robert Duvall), Mr. Big in Big Tobacco. Naylor goes to Hollywood to negotiate with Mr. Hollywood (Rob Lowe) about getting cigarettes back into movies. Naylor does this while lunching with fellow MOD Squad ("Merchant of Death") members, lobbyists representing alcohol and firearms, and trying to educate his son about what is great about America. Our greatness boils down to two things, Naylor tells his son - our endless appeals system, and the fact that if you can argue correctly, you are never wrong.

Eckhart nails this role (pardon the pun). What makes this a great performance is that Eckhart does not play Naylor as a true believer, either in tobacco or the morality of the game he plays. He is just very, very good at his job, and he's got a mortgage. "99% of what goes on in the world, for good or evil, is motivated by the fact that people have to pay the mortgage."

Naylor's life takes a sudden turn south as he is (a) threatened with murder (and there is something about the threat that makes it realistic) and (b) starts sleeping with a probing journalist (Katie Holmes), when he should know better than nothing will be 'off the record.' But these two scenarios merely create a higher wire for our acrobatic hero to negotiate, and he does so with style and panache.

"Thank You For Smoking" may make you shift uncomfortably in your seat a few times, but it will make you laugh a heck of a lot more. And, rarest of all for movies these days, it will make you think. What a great movie.