Review: Thank You For Smoking

Rated R | 92 mins

IMDB Info

A wall-to-wall satire, Thank You for Smoking is amusing and efficient, if not groundbreaking. Told from the first-person point-of-view of Big Tobacco spokesman Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), the movie is, as its title suggests, a sarcastic look at the tactics of cigarette-company lobbyists and those of their government-opposition. It functions well as such; the script and performances are both smart and funny. In the lead role, Aaron Eckhart, especially, is absolutely terrific at sympathetically and empathetically capturing a man who rallies for a rather horrible cause. However, his performance is one of the few aspects of the movie that transcend the level of the well-oiled and well-assembled, if not particularly daring, machine that Thank You for Smoking represents. While humorous and occasionally shocking, the movie is rarely able to reach a status beyond mere proficiency because it never reveals anything to the audience that it doesn’t already know. In order to be a great satire, a picture needs to have a stronger punch-line than the mere “cigarettes are bad for you” that this one tries to jab at the viewer with. Still, Thank You for Smoking never overstays its welcome at a short ninety-two minutes and, for what it does do, it does effectively.