Jason Reitman's Thank You for Smoking depicts the plight of Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), a propaganda-spouting cigarette industry mogul whose dubious business ethics haunt his tender relationship with his 12-year-old son. Thus, the film parades its pseudo-controversial tobacco industry politics.
However, the film's form blatantly contradicts it content. Thank You for Smoking never disrupts its own artificial projection of pleasure. In fact, it progresses very much like the experience of inhaling a cigarette: feels smooth and goes down easy. What, then, are the ethical implications of smoking a cigarette that purports to discourage its smoker from smoking it?
Glamorized pinups of Hollywood movie stars enjoying smoking, from Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, to Lindsay Lohan and Johnny Depp, have fostered cigarettes' appeal in the U.S. for a long time. Thank You for Smoking in no way challenges its viewer to think outside of this paradigm: it aestheticizes the image of the cigarette -- which enjoys a host of dramatically lit close-ups -- the same way those sinfully tobacco-pregnant movies of old did.
Further, despite the plenitude of anti-smoking cliches it sports, Thank You for Smoking offers its viewer relatively little insight into the cultural/economic structures that make tobacco such an enticing and lucrative industry. In a time of hefty taxes and rampant smoking bans, the film's opportunistic appropriation of an anti-smoking high concept, which motivates its conventional plot, is rather thinly veiled.
Thank You for Smoking is a story about human relationships, Katie Holmes wearing shirts and, most importantly, about eating buttery, overpriced popcorn. However, the film presents its own ethical contemplation: do Jason Reitman's dubious politics warrant a Thank You for Smoking ban? Well, for $10.50 (not including transportation, snacks, or soda) there are worse ways to spend to 92 minutes.
