Movie Pick

Smoke It While We’ve Got It

Thank You For Smoking (R)

originally published April 19, 2006

For what feels like the first time in two years, we here in Athens were lucky enough to get an acclaimed, independent feature within a few short weeks of its theatrical debut. With Thank You for Smoking, the economics of this decision make perfect sense. The film earned nearly $8000 per screen in its limited run, and a liberal town like Athens, filled with its nicotine addicts and intelligent, adult filmgoers looking for something besides another animated flick or Shitty Movie 4, should at least match that figure. Usually we have to wait until months later, once a film’s window of viability has closed, or it just never comes at all. That being said, Athens, make good on my boasts regarding our cinematic tastes and see this movie, lest we be stuck this summer with theaters stocked entirely with high concept crap and action sequels, instead of witty, thought-provoking, mature entertainment like Jason Reitman’s festival hit.

Smoking asks us to sympathize with the world’s most loathed man, Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), the Vice President for the Academy of Tobacco Studies - a front for iffy research contending smoking isn’t bad for you - and member of the MOD (Merchants of Death) Squad. Smoking Nick, boozing Polly Bailey (Maria Bello) and gun nut Bobby Jay Bliss (the truly underrated David Koechner, who nearly wrestled Anchorman’s crown from comedic royalty, King Will and Prince Carell) ensure the United States’ number of tobacco-, alcohol- and firearm-related deaths remain at all-time highs. Nick, Newsweek’s “Sultan of Spin,” is the MOD Squad’s MVP. He can hush a dying Marlboro Man’s (Sam Elliott) emphysemic cough with blood money; he can turn a winsome, up-and-coming reporter (Katie Holmes) into a small-time Storm Watcher; he can even make Vermont cheddar cheese seem more harmful than a pack of Kools.

Eckhart won’t let you dislike Nick, even when the bastard badgers a little girl about her mother’s credentials for assessing the harmfulness of smoking. Blissful and remorseless (Nick calls it “moral flexibility”), the man knows how to talk (he has a BA in “kicking ass and taking names”), and he’s turned that attribute into a lucrative occupation. So his job involves protecting an industry that kills over 400,000 people a year, what’s a little death against massive profit? However, Nick is also a dad, who must balance marketing death and modeling roles for his son, Joey (the preternatural Cameron Bright). Like most parents, Nick provides Joey with an incomplete picture of his life, never allowing him in on the really, really bad stuff, but being honest enough about the infamy that accompanies a job like Nick’s. (Not many trades risk nicotine patch-induced comas.) Coaching his boy in the art of arguing (“argue correctly, and you’re never wrong”), Nick provides Joey with skills useful at school and at home.

Speaking of fathers and sons, writer-director Jason Reitman comes from strong cinematic stock. His father Ivan directed Ghost Busters, one of several cinematic creations that made me the man I am today. Yet Reitman the Younger has done his father one better. In several hit comedies, Papa Reitman never displayed the brains his son has in just one. Jason Reitman has given America its smartest satire since Team America (the lack of puppet sex provides Smoking with a slight lead). In adapting Christopher Buckley’s bestseller, Reitman perforates his screenplay with quotable gems, leaving no sacred cow untipped. Environmentalists equal pussies. Hollywood is repped by an Asia-obsessed agent (rosy-cheeked Rob Lowe speaking with eloquent understatement), his ass-kissing assistant (the perfectly sycophantic Seth Brody, “The OC”), and an agency arrogantly abbreviated EGO. Everything recidivistic about the genteel South, Winston-Salem and Big Tobacco are captured in Robert Duvall’s mustachioed Captain with his mint juleps. Finally, the U.S. government, the most appealing aspect of which, Nick cynically notes, is its endless appeals system, is fronted by Ortolan Finistirre (William H. Macy), a liberal senator looking to plaster cigarette packs with a poison warning that includes a skull, replete with rotting flesh and crossbones. No one escapes Reitman’s eagle eye, and, unlike most Hollywood comedies, he doesn’t cut his own legs off with Parker and Stone’s bathroom humor or the extreme offensiveness of The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Smoking remains all aboveboard. Your hip grandparents could scratch their satiric itch with this not-so-bad boy.

Reitman’s first feature is not without signs of inexperience, but that jumpy, episodic arrhythmia could be fixed by switching to decaf. Otherwise, the attention-deficit hyperactivity fits perfectly. Snide subtitles, silly telestrated explanations and ridiculous animated slides only add to this brilliant first film. The able cast (including the previously unmentioned J.K. Simmons, who could be a film’s bombastic wingman anytime) amassed by the director successfully grabs America’s collective arm and forces us to hit ourselves. Still, Smoking never makes you feel bad to be American or a smoker. Above attributing blame or guilt, the comedy would rather we humorously reflect upon our obsession with that which kills us, before gently nudging us toward the insight that we’ve got it pretty good. After all, we are free to choose what will do us in concurrently with someone profiting from that voluntary demise. So go ahead. Light up. Pop open a cold one. Teach your son or daughter how to fire that Glock hidden under your pillow. This is America, by damn, the home of the free and the land of the brave. Just don’t forget to laugh.

Drew Wheeler

Drew Wheeler