Possibly the best publicity this movie could ever have had is the Jack Abramoff scandal. Until the man in the fedora was alleged to have given gifts in direct exchange for help with legislation that benefitted his clients I very much doubt that many people were aware of just what a lobbyist does in Washington. And even after this film, amusing as it was, I doubt that anyone will understand fully just how much of an affect industry lobbyists have on how our government functions.
Ostensibly the story of Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), premiere lobbyist for the tobacco industry, Thank You For Smoking isn’t really about lobbying at all. It isn’t about corporations and the way in which they try to manipulate a government that is supposed to represent the best interests of the people. No, Thank You For Smoking is really a movie about the fact that Americans have turned off their brains and have let advertising do our thinking for us.
Nick is too much of a snake to like and to much of a charmer to hate. His philosophy of life, propounded to his son Joey (Cameron Bright, clone number 6 in Ultraviolet) is that if argued properly any point is winnable. Pay close attention to the scene in which they talk about which flavor of ice cream is better, chocolate or vanilla. If you can internalize the manner in which Nick wins the argument you will advertising-proof yourself forever.
Wrapped in an absurd plot involving a reporter willing to sleep with her source to get a story (Katie Holmes in a much hyped and utterly pedestrian sex scene that doesn’t even show any flesh), Nick’s fellow lobbyists, the Merchants of Death (Maria Bello and David Koechner), and a bill from a Senator from Vermont (William H. Macy) requiring cigarette packs to be labelled with a skull and crossbones and the word poison, a move just ridiculous enough to be plausible, Thank You For Smoking is more straight comedy than it is satire. And I’m sure watching it in DC gave it a particular edge not only with our obsession with the government but also with the high percentage of DC locations (one inspired bit of architectural casting: the FBI building as the headquarters of the Academy of Tobacco Studies).
For these things, and for the fabulous coupe of making an entire movie about cigarettes in which absolutely no one lights up, Thank You For Smoking gets a 3 out of 5 popcorns.
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