Thank You for Smoking Release Date: March 16, 2006 Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Robert Duvall, Katie Holmes, William H. Macy, Sam Elliott Directed by: Jason Reitman
GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 3/16/06)
(This review appeared in the April 2006 issue of Premiere.)
With his outlandish story lines, taste for rococo names (Senator Ortolan Finistirre is one character here), and seemingly endless supply of very zingy one-liners, novelist Christopher Buckley is the closest thing to a Wodehouse the admittedly thin ranks of Beltway satirists will ever produce. His kind of wit, rare as it is in general, seems uncongenial to the current modes of film comedy, but writer-director Jason Reitman, here adapting Buckley's 1994 lampoon of the tobacco lobby, understands that the author's verbal slapstick and pyrotechnical plot turns are both smart and broad, and he and his cast, led by Aaron Eckhart at his most hilariously slick, just let rip. This is the kind of comedy that gives you two meaty underhanded jokes for every big obvious guffaw. It doesn't add up to much more than that, but there's no earthly reason why it ought to. —Glenn Kenny
