THANK YOU FOR SMOKING

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Blame The Lobbyist
Jason Reitman Does Satire Without The Bitter Aftertaste

By Cole Smithey

Writer/director Jason Reitman tries to step outside of his father Ivan Reitman's ("Ghostbusters") footsteps with a soft peddled send up of Big Tobacco based on Christopher Buckley's novel.

Alternately infuriating and charming Aaron Eckhart does the contemptible honors as Washington tobacco lobbyist and spin-doctor Nick Naylor.

When Nick isn't teaching his son the ins and outs of winning debates, or comparing death statistics over lunch with fellow "Merchants of Death" lobbyists, Nick is busy battling against an anti-smoking campaign to put a skull-and-crossbones on every cigarette pack.

Snappy pacing and carefully sculpted set pieces don't disguise the satire's lack of teeth. Reitman's inability to pay off on any of the film's skeletal sub-plots leaves Aaron Eckhart holding the narrative bag even if the capable actor carries the movie on his brawny shoulders like an obsolete Atlas.

Nick Naylor is in love with himself. Jason Reitman waters down the narcissistic Naylor of Buckley's novel with a pasted-on loving paternal aspect that vaguely mitigates the damage Nick reaps on society, and liberal political opponents like Vermont Senator Ortolan Finistirre (William H. Macy).

Naylor is a morally rudderless guy with a voracious capacity for vaporizing enemies with ambiguous logic fuelled by greed. He would be a great spokesperson for Scientology because he runs on a self-recharging battery of adrenaline released by greasing his way through confrontation with a smile. In short, Nick Naylor is a much smarter version of George Bush whose inexcusable smirk and faulty linguistics infect every subject he ever addressed.

Nick gets a public smack down after Heather Holloway (Katie Holmes), the Washington Post journalist he's been screwing, writes a tell-all expose about Nick's dirty secrets. The article sends a brief shudder through Nick's career sails but doesn't come close to delivering the kind of public roasting that the reprehensible character deserves.

Jason Reitman makes a compound mistake by viewing Nick Naylor as a man of admirable exploits rather than as an anti-hero inextricably bound to the film's primary antagonist, the tobacco corporations. In a world where monolithic corporations are spreading global warming like an exponential function, "Thank You For Smoking" is too squishy in the middle to be of much value: entertainment or otherwise. It doesn't meet the demands of the genre because it doesn't choose sides.

In Jason Reitman's shameless overture to Hollywood, he has accomplished giving them exactly what they want, a seemingly lefty movie with no cojones. With friends like these, the left needs no enemies.

Rated R. 92 mins. 

GARDEN STATE

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Boy Howdy
Zach Braff’s Debut Sends Up Sedatives

By Cole Smithey

Actor Zach Braff makes an impressive if flawed writing-and-directing debut with a plaintive postmodern drama that relies on unspoken wit to entertain its audience (think a cross between "Harold and Maude" and "The Graduate").

Braff leads the movie as Andrew Largeman (AKA "Large"), a 20 year-old antidepressant addict who returns to his home in New Jersey for his mother's funeral after a ten year absence. Andrew soon liberates himself from his reliance on medication.

He discovers love in the guise of local wacky chic Samantha (Natalie Portman). Peter Sarsgaard ("Shattered Glass") adds depth to the movie as Andrew's stoner friend from childhood, and Ian Holm ("The Sweet Hereafter") gives an understated performance as Andrew's detached psychologist father.

"Garden State" is a gently muted satire about the pervasive use of antidepressants in American society. In the ‘90s, drugs like Zoloft, Paxil, and Prozac became a colossal fad. Those drugs have since left more than a few unnecessarily addicted people in their wake. The core of the movie’s narrative springs from a kitchen accident that Andrew suffered with his mother when he was 10 that left her paralyzed, him severely depressed, and resulted in his father prescribing liberal doses of antidepressants while sending Andrew away from the family’s New Jersey home.

Andrew has since been working successfully as a television actor in Los Angeles. He behaves with a shell-shocked vulnerability that’s both endearing and unnerving. But his mother’s recent death sparks a newfound sense of liberation in Andrew that he immediately seizes as a reason to rid himself of his addiction.

Andrew partakes in his childhood friends’ proclivity for self-medicating with pot and alcohol on the night of his mother’s funeral as they sit around in a basement "getting messed up." They play spin-the-bottle-truth-or-dare. The scene is a deft snapshot of pure modern Americana, complete with Andrew enjoying a drug-fueled make-out session with a teenaged local girl. Here we witness a suburban community of disenfranchised kids preemptively guarding themselves from unseen cultural pressures around them.

The visit to his old home affords Andrew an opportunity to enjoy his most prized possession, a black sidecar motorcycle that his grandfather bequeathed to him year’s ago. The unconventional mode of transportation acts as an identifying marker for Andrew’s battle for freedom. There's a correlation to World War II, giving a farcical wink to his bold attempt at escaping from the drug induced mental prison that his father instituted.

Zach Braff’s potential as a writer/director/actor is something to be reckoned with. He liberally applies inventive atmospheric sight gags to tweak the audience’s visual comprehension of the story’s subtext. In one scene, a doctor’s diploma hangs upside-down on his office ceiling.

In another comic detour Andrew wears a shirt made from fabric that exactly matches the floral pattern of the wallpaper behind him. The upstart director intuitively uses this particular brand of cinematic shorthand with a skill and economy that matches similar such visual flourishes from directors like Mike Nichols ("The Graduate") or Richard Linklater ("Waking Life"). But while "Garden State" is an achievement for its use of comic tone and visual pizzazz to convey the inner turbulence of its repressed characters, it ultimately comes up short in a plot construction that stalls in the third act.

By the last part of the movie, Andrew and his apparent soul mate Samantha have fallen into the early bliss of newly found love. We understand the characters’ desperate emotional need to fill the troubled gaps in their addictive personalities. We can appreciate their do-it-yourself efforts to leverage their amorous bond into a foundation for their budding lives. But there is too much of a blind-leading-the-blind element for the film to effect a satisfying resolve.

Zach Braff is an interesting filmmaker with a keen eye for detail, but he's hindered by an underdeveloped perception of climax or, in this case, the high-wire act of achieving a purposeful anti-climax. Nonetheless, Braff's efforts are admirable, and point toward better things to come.

Rated R. 109 mins.