Thank You For Smoking

In Jason (son of Ivan) Reitman's wickedly clever satire, 'Thank You For Smoking', the viewer is given a hilarious glimpse into the precarious existence of Big Tobacco lobbyist and B.S. artist extraordinaire Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart). The film sets out very quickly what Nick Naylor's true job function is: deflect the slings and arrows of finger-wagging critics of his product and put the best possible face on one of Earth's biggest killers. What makes the film so funny is the biting script. Naylor is a great creation, a Teflon-slick mouthpiece with two failsafe defense mechanisms; the truth and the ability to beat his critics to the punch.

It should be noted that 'Thank You For Smoking' isn't necessarily about the Big Tobacco lobby, because it unloads on all of American society's deadliest vices (smokes, booze and guns) as well as their critics' tendencies to slide into the role of self-righteous safety police, only to have it blow up in their faces. In fact, the film saves its sharpest knives for a sequence when Nick is sent to ply an oblivious Hollywood power broker (Rob Lowe) to get more cigarette smoking in major films. This portion of the film perpetuates one long-held truth; Hollywood films are never funnier than when their ripping on themselves.

In the end, this film works because it maintains a wicked pace for the entire duration without slowing itself down with a heavy-handed moral for the audience at the final credits. Nick Naylor is pretty much a smooth-talking, unapologetic bastard the entire way through. He is even able to muster the stones to tell a Senate Hearing Committee, without hesitation, that he would buy his own son a pack of smokes on his 18th birthday, if that's what he really wanted. It's in this scene that Nick Naylor is able to win over his most ardent critics, with his ability to stick to his message, with the widest grin possible and be a company man all the way to the end, regardless of the body count.

Read an alternative review of Thank You For Smoking here, courtesy of The Skinny Film team.