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Movie Review: Thank You For Smoking
Smoking’s satire rips world of spin
By John Wirt
jwirt@theadvocate.com
Advocate movie critic
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PLAY OFFICIAL TRAILER
out of 4 stars.
Based on the 1994 satirical novel by Christopher Buckley, Thank You For Smoking puts a fictional maestro of spin, Nick Naylor, on screen in all his gloriously unfettered amorality. For him and his kind, truth is always irrelevant.
Aaron Eckhart dives head first into the role of Nick, spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies. Nick smiles while he kills, albeit indirectly, hundreds of thousands of people annually. It’s a bright, charismatic smile. “I’m the Col. Sanders of nicotine,” he says.
Nick has weekly powwows with peers responsible for putting happy faces on the gun and alcohol industries. The guiltless trio dubs itself the Mod Squad, a.k.a. the Merchants of Death.
David Koechner, with his pudgy bubba mug, is the face of the gun business. Maria Bello is the alcohol industry’s gung-ho spokeswoman. During one of the movie’s more audacious scenes, the Mod Squad argues about which of its respective clients harms society the most. These are the kind of folks who give capitalism a bad name. Of course, they’d never admit it in public.
While the ingeniously persuasive Nick stands up for big tobacco, a crusading U.S. senator wants to put a skull-and-crossbones on every cigarette pack. The deadly serious William H. Macy fills the sanctimonious politician’s shoes nicely. The senator is another example of how smart Thank You For Smoking is.
This equal opportunity-offender movie doesn’t cut opportunistic politicians a break. Macy’s senator is a buffoon.
Nor do the press and Hollywood go unscathed. Katie Holmes co-stars as a pretty young reporter for The Washington Probe. She extracts a career-making story from Nick. Her methods, however, show that journalism, which has been the victim of many ethics lapses in the recent years, will stoop to conquer.
On the Hollywood beat, the movie achieves another casting coup. The instinctively sleazy Rob Lowe oozes as a super-agent enlisted to promote the glamour of smoking. The film gets more boosts from Robert Duvall as big tobacco’s Southern-toned grand old man and 12-year-old Cameron Bright as Nick’s impressionable son.
Even Thank You For Smoking’s credits are smart. Cigarette packaging rolls across the screen as Johnny Bond and His Red River Valley Boys perform their 1947 ode to nicotine addicts, “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette).”
Thank You For Smoking sags in its middle. When it’s in full spin, though, it’s great stuff. For those who appreciate the fine art of satire, something Hollywood rarely attempts, the movie’s as refreshing as that mid-morning cancer-stick break.
