Thank You For Smoking (2006)

Thank You For Smoking, 2006

Written & Directed by Jason Reitman
Based on the novel by Christopher Buckley















In Broadcast News, Albert Brooks asked, "What's the devil going to look like when he's around? Nobody's gonna be taken in by a guy with fangs and a pointy tail." The devil would do well to look like Aaron Eckhart, handsome enough to bewitch and average enough to be unthreatening, and with more charm than a box of Irish-themed marshmallow cereal. Eckhart relishes the role of Nick Naylor, the maddeningly likeable face of the industry we love to hate: Big Tobacco. Naylor is a guy who can hawk cigarettes while sitting next to a child with cancer (and yes, the boy is bald from the chemo), and yet Eckhart still makes him compulsively watchable.

Naylor keeps company with other cheery-faced Merchants Of Death (or, The M.O.D. Squad), in alcohol spokeswoman Polly Bailey (Maria Bello) and firearms spokesman Bobby Jay Bliss (David Koechner.) He wheels and deals with the Big Daddy of tobacco (Robert Duvall), a former star of cigarette advertising (Sam Elliott), and two vacuous Hollywood types (Rob Lowe and Adam Brody), and faces off against a liberal Vermont senator (William H. Macy.) All these adventures, vigorously portrayed by this first-rate cast, make for brisk and lively satire. (Less game is Katie Holmes, too dewy in the role of a ruthless reporter.)

Director Reitman makes the material crackle, but ultimately, Thank You is all about ideas, not character. The attempt to humanize the story -- a subplot with Naylor's young son who may be influenced by his father's glorification of cigarettes -- feels too tacked-on to count as an emotional hook. Thank You may not sustain your hunger for a good story, but it still leaves you with some tasty ideas to chew on.

Grade: B