Thank You for Smoking (2005)
Directed by Jason Reitman
Nick Naylor is a charismatic spin-doctor for Big Tobacco who'll fight to protect America's right to smoke -- even if it kills him -- while still remaining a role model for his 12-year old son. When he incurs the wrath of a senator bent on snuffing out cigarettes, Nick's powers of "filtering the truth" will be put to the test.
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What critics compared Thank You for Smoking to
It’s Thank You for Smoking and Wag the Dog with all the satire stripped out and just the crass reality remaining.
The film, directed by John Madden – best known for “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” – moves in gyrations done before and more genuinely in “Michael Clayton” and “Thank You for Smoking,” but does bring a unique lens to the D.C. universe, especially the means of capturing votes and identifying target blocs.
As an indictment of the lobbying business, the film lacks the satirical wit of Jason Reitman’s “Thank You for Smoking.”
We don’t see a lot of cinematic representation of the lobbying world; when it’s played for drama like it is here (as opposed to the satire of something like 2006’s excellent “Thank You for Smoking”), there’s a lot of potential.
The last notable film that comes to mind that centered on a modern political lobbyist was Jason Reitman's amusing Thank You for Smoking (2005) but, given its concentration on women trying to hold their own with the big boys, a more direct parallel is provided by this year's Equity, a solid, if not entirely realized, look at women fighting to make their mark in investment banking.
In one fell swoop, he has managed to surpass almost everything his father has directed (with the possible exception of "Ghostbusters"), emerging as a major talent to watch for.
Writer-director Jason Reitman (son of "Ghostbusters" filmmaker Ivan Reitman), in adapting the novel of the same name by Christopher Buckley (son of political commentator William F. Buckley), instead concentrates on making the film a character piece.
Now Jason Reitman -- whose liberal father, Ivan, directed such Hollywood blockbusters as Stripes and Ghostbusters -- has made his feature-length directorial debut with an adaptation of Buckley's novel.
Reitman is the son of director Ivan Reitman (of Ghostbusters fame), but there's little or nothing of his father's broad comedic style about his work.
Jason Reitman, the son of Ivan Reitman who directed and produced popular comedy films such as Ghostbusters and Meatballs, directs Thank You For Smoking, based on the book by Christopher Buckley.
“Thank You for Smoking” is better than anything he’s done since “Ghostbusters.”
Also fun are effusive character actor J.K. Simmons ("Spider-Man 2") as Naylor's boss BR and Robert Duvall ("Open Range," "Secondhand Lions") as the Captain, the titan of the tobacco industry (although he could have borrowed a page from Gene Hackman's inveterate smoker in "Heartbreakers").
They are the best part of this movie, which elicits memories of 2005's "Thank You for Smoking."
That’s not to say it isn’t a satire because Marla Grayson would fit quite well alongside Aaron Eckhart’s Nick Naylor from Thank You For Smoking .
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The film is also set in the early days of the pandemic, and the ingenious way it gets around protocols and masks brings to mind that line in Thank You For Smoking about “good thing we invented the, you know, whatever device.”
Given a different emphasis, the script could have been as sharply satirical as “Thank You for Smoking” or as revealing as “Up in the Air.”
Along the way, he bonds with a sleazy doctor (Hank Azaria), and they seem like a couple of funny guys who just happen to be exploiting human misery — kind of like Aaron Eckhart's character in Thank You for Smoking.
Drawn from the same murky well of Hollywood ethical ambiguity that gave us "Thank You for Smoking" and last year's "Up In the Air," "Love & Other Drugs" audaciously defines its slick anti-hero protagonist as beyond reproach.
Love and Other Drugs could have been a brilliant satire in the manner of Thank You for Smoking if only director Edward Zwick and his co-writers had concentrated a lot more on the "drugs" and a lot less on the "love."
It could have been a smart satire, along the lines of Thank You For Smoking, but it never quite gets there.
However, rather than flesh out Jamie's character, or sink their teeth into the pharmaceutical industry Thank You For Smoking style, writer-director Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond, Glory) and co-writer Charles Randolph instead introduce Maggie (Hathaway), a young, passionate, Parkinson's stricken beauty who calls Jamie on his bullshit and transforms the film into a romantic dramedy.
And much as Jason Reitman did with “Thank You For Smoking,” he’s made a debut feature better than anything his old man has done in more than two decades.)
Only occasionally, as in “Thank You for Smoking” (2005), do these men — and the audience — understand that bucking the system doesn’t always make you less a part of it.
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Reitman had just made Thank You for Smoking, his adaptation of Christopher Buckley's novel about the evils of tobacco marketing, and his mordantly matter-of-fact tone turned out to be a perfect fit for Cody's equally deadpan style.
There is a tendency in the director’s work to include slightly pompous moralising – see the anti-porn rhetoric in Men, Women and Children , or even the lay-offs narrative in Up in the Air – that is absent from his best films, like Thank You For Smoking and Juno , however contentious their subject matter.
I now think it's the best film Reitman has made in a career of slightly overpraised good films ( Juno , Up in the Air , Young Adult ) some flat-out bad ones ( Labor Day ; Men, Women & Children ), and an unsung gem ( Thank You for Smoking ).
Reitman, for his part, is coming off a bad patch (2014’s preachy “Men, Women & Children”; 2013’s ridiculous “Labor Day”) that put his early triumphs (including 2005’s “Thank You for Smoking” and 2009’s “Up in the Air”) in uncomfortable perspective.
Whether it be promoting cigarette smoking in Thank You for Smoking , being a corporate downsizer in Up in the Air or even an undisclosed author for a failing children’s book series in Young Adult , Reitman’s diverse filmography contains a strikingly recurring thread of themes that are evident again in Tully .
Remember that classic scene in Thank You For Smoking, when Aaron Eckharts deliciously slimy tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor pitches a sexy, cigarette-plugging scene for an upcoming movie?