Written by: Jason Reitman (based on a novel by Christopher Buckley)
Directed by: Jason Reitman
MPAA: Rated R (for language and some sexual content).
Runtime: 92 min.
CAST...
Nick Naylor: Aaron Eckhart
Polly Bailey: Maria Bello
Jack: Adam Brody
Lorne Lutch: Sam Elliot
Heather Holloway: Katie Holmes
Bobby Jay Bliss: David Koechner
Jeff Megall: Rob Lowe
Senator Ortolan K. Finistirre: William H. Macy
Budd "BR" Rohrabacher: J.K. Simmons
Doak "The Captain" Boukin: Robert Duvall
The plaque on the wall reads, "God Bless America: Where Money Can Buy Anything." The wall is in a Washington D.C. restaurant, behind a booth where three powerful lobbyists -- one representing the tobacco industry (Aaron Eckhart), a liquor lobbyist (Maria Bello), and a gun lobbyist (David Koechner) -- meet regularly for lunch. Aaron Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, a handsome genius who is such a master with words that he can make a boy with cancer and no hair feel guilty for having cancer. Eckhart is brilliant as the star of Thank You for Smoking. David Koechner plays gun lobbyist Bobby Jay Bliss to a "T," and Maria Bello is the funny, seasoned liquor lobbyist Polly Bailey. The trio have three of the toughest jobs in Washington: trying to convince more and more people to buy tobacco, guns and liquor. How do they live with themselves? Why shouldn't we hate them? Well, this film provides a hilarious perspective on those questions.
Thank You for Smoking succeeds on every level. It is laugh-out-funny. It is mean. It is kind and touching. And, it lands its satirical jabs without pounding us over the head with dumb humor. For that we can thank director Jason Reitman ("Father's Day," "Dave," "Ghostbusters"). He paces the film perfectly -- it lasts only 92 minutes, and could have run much longer and stayed funny. In that hour-and-a-half we get a lesson and a point of view -- not on how bad cigarettes are, but on how silly, and, sometimes, just plain dumb, the American population and its government can be. Tobacco and lobbyists are only a McGuffin which launches us into the subject the movie is really about.
The moral center of the movie is Nick Naylor's young son, Joey (played perfectly by Cameron Bright). Naylor is divorced, and Joey splits his time between his mother and father. Joey cherishes his father, and has developed his father's verbal gift for winning arguments and debates with anybody, about anything. Naylor describes his own gift with words early in the movie when he says, "Michael Jordan plays ball. Charles Manson kills people. I talk." Joey watches Naylor deftly field questions and objections about smoking while converting his responses into positive statememts about his product and its makers.
But the real issue isn't smoking. The real issue is what a select few powerful people (such as Naylor and his lobbyist friends and bosses) say and do to convince people that they should believe the fallacious, positive spin blurted out by the lobbyists, simply because the spin is so convincing. We get a lesson on spin during one of the film's great moments, when Joey's simple-minded teacher assigns his class a speech titled, "Why America Is the Best Country In the World." Nick Naylor (correctly) tells Joey why the speech's premise is flawed and how to manipulate the flaws in the assigment's title, ensuring Joey an "A" on the speech.
Even though Naylor's boss, "BR," (J.K. Simmoms) and the big big boss (Robert Duvall as "The Captain") are corrupt, Naylor (barely) manages to retain enough moral consciousness to hang in there, even when his trade secrets are used in attempt to ruin him in a sexual ruse by reporter Heather Holloway (Katie Holmes in a brief but pivotal role). William H. Macy, as activist Senator Ortolan K. Finistirre, is also a Naylor-hater, suppliying relentless grief to his daily life. Under that kind of pressure, even someone as gifted as Nick Naylor can suddenly find themselves up the creek without a paddle to row the canoe, or worse, without a conoe. Katie Holmes's unethical feature story about Nick Naylor lack of ethics, combined with Macy's badgering, provide the movie's turning point. Conflicts arise concerning a son's upbringing, employer/employee loyalty, self respect and self esteem all converge.
Amidst all the big-company lies and all the problems that those lies cause, Naylor must make the most important decisions ever about his own life. Quickly. As he works on restoring his own dignity, the movie makes us look inward at our own choices. It does so with wit and intelligence that makes us laugh out loud. It also gets us to stop laughing just long enough to think about our own life-choices. But who cares? It's only a movie, right?
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