Film Review: Thank You for Smoking
Sunday, 29 October 2006 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daThank You for Smoking is a wryly funny satire about a Big Tobacco rep and lobbyist at the top of his game. ("My job requires a certain... moral flexibility.") As we meet Nick, he's going on a TV talk show to represent the Academy of Tobacco Studies (and winning over Cancer Boy on that show). Next, he's having drinks with two colleagues from the Firearms and Alcohol lobbies (they call themselves "The M.O.D Squad" for Merchants of Death).
The heart of the film is about Nick's relationship with his 12-year-old son, with whom he has shared custody with his ex. His son wants to know what his dad's job is really like, so Nick takes him to California on visits to a film agent (spot-on and very funny) and to bring a suitcase of cash as a bribe to the original Marlboro Man, dying of cancer.
Nick tells the son, "The beauty of an argument is, if you argue correctly you're never wrong." Persuasion and finesse practically ooze from every scene. Still, the first 1/3 feels a bit hokey, with set-pieces all in a row as he takes a few too many digs at the morally upright but awfully anti-charismatic anti-smoking lobbies, and we meet the asshole boss, frigid ex-wife, and mortified son when dad comes to parent-day at school.
But the latter 2/3 redeem the movie, as Nick tries to be a good father and makes the potentially career-damaging mistake of becoming sexually involved with a reporter who is doing a story on him. (When they meet she asks how he can live with himself. He gives what he calls "The Yuppie Nuremburg defense": he's got to pay the mortgage. He continues, "what would the world be like if everyone rented?") She goes on to use a tremendous amount of information against him in the article, and things don't look too promising for our man Nick.
This was originally a novel, by Christopher Buckley, which I may track down. Eventually.
The heart of the film is about Nick's relationship with his 12-year-old son, with whom he has shared custody with his ex. His son wants to know what his dad's job is really like, so Nick takes him to California on visits to a film agent (spot-on and very funny) and to bring a suitcase of cash as a bribe to the original Marlboro Man, dying of cancer.
Nick tells the son, "The beauty of an argument is, if you argue correctly you're never wrong." Persuasion and finesse practically ooze from every scene. Still, the first 1/3 feels a bit hokey, with set-pieces all in a row as he takes a few too many digs at the morally upright but awfully anti-charismatic anti-smoking lobbies, and we meet the asshole boss, frigid ex-wife, and mortified son when dad comes to parent-day at school.
But the latter 2/3 redeem the movie, as Nick tries to be a good father and makes the potentially career-damaging mistake of becoming sexually involved with a reporter who is doing a story on him. (When they meet she asks how he can live with himself. He gives what he calls "The Yuppie Nuremburg defense": he's got to pay the mortgage. He continues, "what would the world be like if everyone rented?") She goes on to use a tremendous amount of information against him in the article, and things don't look too promising for our man Nick.
This was originally a novel, by Christopher Buckley, which I may track down. Eventually.
