Half-Assed Movie Reviews

March 31, 2010:  Thank You for Smoking

This is going to be a fairly short review, but that’s no reflection on the film and I can without hesitation recommend it.  Thank You for Smoking (2005) was Jason Reitman’s feature directorial debut.  You may have heard more about his later efforts, Juno (2007) and Up in the Air (2009).  He’s a smart and creative writer and director, and has clearly inherited his father’s (Ivan Reitman – director of Ghostbusters among other things) love for subversive comedy.  He has two Best Director Oscar nominations to his name now, and it’s my feeling that he’ll unquestionably win the award at some point, hopefully within the next decade or so.

Based on a novel by Christoper Buckley and adapted for the screen by Reitman, Thank You for Smoking focuses on a character played by the underappreciated Aaron Eckhart, who is the chief lobbyist for the American tobacco industry.  His job is to refute or more commonly redirect accusations aimed at the tobacco companies, turning people’s attention instead towards the philanthropic activities of the companies and the questionable scientific and social claims about tobacco’s harmful effects.  He’s a smooth talker, mostly unconcerned by the moral questions about what he does.

Reitman keeps the film short and the pace fast.  The movie says what it wants to say but doesn’t weigh down the story with too big an arc.  A few heavy-hitting sequences, including a meeting with Robert Duvall as “The Captain” – the last remaining old big tobacco executive and a hero to Eckhart, a meeting with Rob Lowe as a Mike Ovitz-style Hollywood agent as Eckhart tries to negotiate an increase in cigarette smoking in movies, and a meeting with the dying Marlboro Man to try and pay him off to keep him quiet about tobacco’s dangers, are not overplayed and don’t stay any longer than they need to in order to make their satirical point.  Eckhart takes his son with him on this cross-country adventure, much to his ex-wife’s chagrin, but his son learns a lot about negotiation and making an argument and seeing both sides of a dispute.

Eckhart is the key here, and he really sells the role.  The surface personality is not unlike his execrable character from In the Company of Men (1997), and the slick fast-talking is important, but here he has a greater depth of character, as a father who is using his talents to maximum effect and trying to teach his son how to get along in the world, not at all unaware of what he is doing.  He makes convincing arguments, mostly in the form of iconic sound bites which work fine in the quick-editing world of cinema where you can cut away from a scene instead of needing to finish it or see the fallout, but that’s just fine for such a light movie, and the whole point is that we know it all falls apart if you look too closely.

This is a good movie for repeat viewing, in the style of how I used to watch movies but don’t make the time for anymore.  Fortunately, with a review of Thank You for Smoking now written, I can re-watch the film at my leisure without the pressure of needing to re-evaluate it.  The Half-Assed Movie Reviews reader gets enough dull grandstanding about plotlines and people’s careers.  They don’t need to read 50 near-identical reviews of movies like Tommy Boy or The Shawshank Redemption just because I watch them over and over again.

Jason Reitman is one to watch.