Satire’s funny, but needs more anger
Published 9:00 pm Thursday, March 30, 2006
On the face of it, “Thank You for Smoking” looks like a satirical take on the world of Big Tobacco, a kind of “Saturday Night Live” version of “The Insider.”
But that’s not quite what this movie is. It’s less about tobacco than the world of spin doctoring – that art, perfected in Hollywood and appropriated by Washington, D.C. – of lying about an issue until all logic stands on its head.
The movie is based on a novel by Christopher Buckley, the son of conservative pooh-bah William F. Buckley and an accomplished comic writer in his own right. It follows the adventures of Nick Naylor (played by Aaron Eckhart), a spokesman for the tobacco industry.
Nick’s job is the art of political discourse today: the bald-faced lie that ends up being accepted as a valid point. His product is indefensible, but he knows how to win arguments with debating tricks and cheap theatrics. It’s called spin doctoring, and Nick loves his job.
His skills are tested when an anti-smoking senator (William H. Macy) mounts a campaign to put the skull-and-crossbones on every pack of cigarettes. Nick responds by pumping up tobacco’s product-placement efforts in Hollywood – a hilarious episode with Rob Lowe and Adam Brody oozing smarm as a power-broker agent and his assistant.
Nick also must put out a fire, so to speak, when a famous cigarette pitchman – the film’s equivalent of the Marlboro Man – threatens to come out against smoking after he is diagnosed with lung cancer. He’s played by Sam Elliott, who cannily brings his aura of Western cool to a brilliantly conceived and written scene.
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Nick gets interviewed (and bedded) by an enterprising reporter (Katie Holmes), and is forced to pay more attention to his son (Cameron Bright), who lives with Nick’s resentful ex-wife. Not every subplot in Nick’s life pays off, though the film stays so busy it doesn’t matter much.
Punctuating the plot are Nick’s drinking and debriefing sessions with two other lobbyists. They work for the gun and alcohol industries, and the three spinmeisters refer to themselves as the “M.O.D. Squad,” for Merchants of Death. Maria Bello and David Koechner spew some fine dialogue in the roles.
Eckhart, the monster chauvinist from “In the Company of Men,” is an apt choice for Nick; he uses his pasted-on grin and dimples to play up Nick’s easy ethics. Also in the lively cast are Robert Duvall, as a julep-sipping tobacco titan, and J.K. Simmons, as Eckhart’s frantic boss.
For all the movie’s laughs, it somehow falls short of greatness. Director Jason Reitman, son of ’80s comedy king Ivan Reitman, keeps the gags and the political incorrectness flying. But there’s an attitude of youthful pranksterism here, rather than, say, the surgical fury of “Dr. Strangelove.” It’s a funny film about the political arena, but maybe we need more than that now.
