Our favorite film critic Dr. Wayne McMullen offers:
Writer/director Jason Reitman's breezy and often-hilarious satire, Thank You For Smoking, skewers the culture of spin we live in. Aaron Eckhart stars as Nick, a slick-tongued lobbyist for Big Tobacco. Nick understands that the process of making a convincing "argument," in a world where truth is in a perpetual state of manipulation, has little to do with facts, reasoning, or rationality. Eckhart is almost too good in this role; he seems to have born to play this character. One of the more disturbing aspects of the film is that his character (Nick), however slimy he may be, is at times almost sympathetic--and even reasonable--with his rationalizations for why he does this kind of work. In summary, Reitman makes his points with well-calculated zingers, without banging the audience on the head with a preachy message. Great fun. (This film is based on Christopher Buckleyís 1994 novel of the same title.)