Thank You For Smoking

B+

This is a cute, smart movie with a dark sense of humor. The main character, Nick Naylor, is a lobbyist whose job is to publicly defend the tobacco industry. As such, he has become the ultimate spin doctor, a man who can take the losing side of an argument and win every time. In today's "Fair and Balanced" brand of journalism where spokesmen for both sides of the issue are presented with equal weight, this guy is destined to get the whole world smoking through personal charm and subterfuge. The beauty is he knows he is wrong, and what makes the movie funny and also compelling is his arguments are just barely too contrived to be acceptable. Barely. It takes a smart script and good actors to be able to pull that off. It would have been very easy to have everything over the top, but instead they keep things just right at the top.

One problem I have with the movie is that the previews gave away some of the best lines and scenes. With such a short movie (92 minutes) they were able to give away what seemed like the majority of the movie. But maybe the most charming part of the movie was the interaction between the divorced Naylor and his son, who he takes along for the ultimate career day. During that day he shows his son some of the finer points of making points, including a gem where the son argues for chocolate and the dad for vanilla.

While the movie is tongue-and-cheek, it is also a very truthful look at the way special interests manipulate facts and arguments to justify absolutely anything. It is the same approach used by Penn and Teller as they do a magic show that consists of telling you how they do magic tricks. Or how Jon Stewart's fake news The Daily Show is able to be more truthful than the real-world journalists he regularly skewers.

Still, even as perfect as the portrait is, there isn't much of a plotline or any kind of weight to the movie and it's hard to give it more than B+.

Back to Index