Written and directed by Jason Reitman from Christopher Buckley’s novel

Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Cameron Bright, Maria Bello and Robert Duvall

92 minutes in CinemaScope

Those of you with good memories should recall the very funny anti-smoking satire Cold Turkey (1971) in which Dick Van Dyke plays a small town reverend whose community is offered $25 million if they can all quit smoking for a month. Although not available in any home video format, Cold Turkey would make an exceptional companion piece to Thank You for Smoking.

For his first feature, Jason Reitman chose to adapt Christopher Buckley’s blistering novel about the inner workings of the American tobacco industry. Jason is the son of über-director/producer Ivan Reitman (Stripes, Ghostbusters, Dave).

Thank You for Smoking hooks you from the opening credits. To the tune of Tex William’s toe-tapping “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette,” we get a whirlwind tour of the history of cigarette packaging design with the cast and crew’s names vividly emblazoned on the wrappers.

Nobody can make a better case for smoking than tobacco spokesperson Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart). Naylor is called to appear on one of those noxious daytime talk shows to debate the pros and cons of smoking. Even with a bald-headed “cancer boy” on the panel, he quickly ad-libs a convincing defense by promising a $50 million ad campaign to deter teen smokers. This guy could disprove gravity. His mantra: “If you argue correctly, you’re never wrong.”

Needing to boost sagging butt sales, Nick decides to revive the “smoking is cool” approach by inserting cigarette consumption into Hollywood films. Not surprisingly, his boss appropriates the idea and calls it his own. In a world where the Marlboro Man is a closeted Kool smoker, no one is to be trusted.

Normally reserved for RAVs (Russians, Arabs or villains), feng shui-ed Hollywood producer Rob Lowe is eager to help change America’s perception of smoking by incorporating heavy-duty product placement into his upcoming outer space epic. These boys don’t care where they get their money from. Lowe is looking for co-financing from the Hitler of the South Pacific.

Anyone familiar with In the Company of Men knows that Eckhart has the role of corporate shitheel down pat. In addition to maintaining a high corporate profile, Naylor must also play a role model for his pre-teen son, Joey (Cameron Bright). The scenes between Eckhart and Bright give the film an even harder edge.

During a “Bring Your Father to School Day” presentation, Nick tells Joey’s sixth-grade class to find out about cigarettes for themselves. Joey not only incorporates his father’s finagling skills into his classroom debate, he also manages to fast talk his mother out of a trip to L.A. with dad.

If the film has one major drawback, it’s that not once, even in the background, do we see anyone light up a cigarette. The closest we get are Southern gentleman Robert Duvall chewing on a cigar and Marlboro Man Sam Elliott’s hazy home. I am sure this was intentional, lest Reitman be accused of endorsing what he lampoons. It is very hard to buy into a room full of nicotine-hawking suits without one ashtray, let alone cigarette in sight.

Through editing and camera placement, Reitman skillfully moves our eyes across his anamorphic frames. For Jason’s sake, I hope his father doesn’t suffer from career envy. With one film, the kid surpassed his old man.

Rating:

Directed by Graham Coleman

134 minutes, digitally projected

Q: What did the Dalai Lama say to the hot dog vendor?

A: Make me one with everything.

That Henny Youngman chestnut, the film Kundun and Howard Stern’s puppet Stuttering John asking His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama if his subjects ever greeted him by saying “Hello, Dalai” mark the extent of my knowledge of Buddhism.

My personal weekday prayer ritual generally commences bright and early at San Diego’s Temple of Cinematic Enlightenment, the Hillcrest Cinemas. While there are at least two dozen active critics in town, it is very seldom that you will find more than six or seven turning up early for those fuzzy foreign pictures with all the talking written out on the bottom. As one confided, “I’m Joe Hollywood. I don’t like that subtitled stuff.”

On this particular morning, the crowd wanting an advance look at Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy was smaller than usual: three print critics, the wife of one critic with two Buddhist friends, and a fourth woman whom I later found out was there strictly for the content. I wouldn’t pass up a free movie on a dare.

Critics are peculiar creatures of habit. For instance, we all sit in the exact same seat for each screening. Jean Lowerison has a bad back and needs to get up, so she’s parked all the way in the back on the aisle. Duncan Shepard is equally as distanced from the screen on the far aisle, opposite side. David Elliott is a bit closer, but still off to the side, and so on.

As for me, be it the AMC Mission Valley #47 or the CineramaDome, you can always find me fourth row center. Don’t ask. Long before I ever attended a critic’s screening, it became apparent that I’d rather have “them” behind me than in front. It is bad enough that audiences are going to talk no matter what. You don’t need the added distraction of people getting up to make endless bathroom or concession runs. And while patrons may have finally learned not to make or receive calls mid-movie, that hasn’t stopped them from flipping on those goddamned blue lights every five minutes to see who called.

With all due respect to my colleagues, people who sit a mile from the screen and/or off to the side are violently insane psychopaths; the type of godless creatures that would commit violent acts in their grandmother’s neighborhood. My proximity to the screen is admittedly intense, but the center “sweet seats” are the only way to go. The further you sit from the middle, the more illumination you lose, and with contemporary cinema being as dim as it is, I don’t want to miss a moment’s brilliance.

Not only don’t critics sit near each other at Hillcrest screenings, it would be downright unthinkable to speak to a fellow journalist while the film is running. Imagine my shock (and relief) when about halfway through Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy I felt a hand tap me on the shoulder, followed by the line, “Never in all my life did I feel the need of an appearance by Richard Gere.” He didn’t startle me in the least. Right about that time, I was considering sawing off my leg for a distraction.

I’m not out to narc my fellow critics, but this one, we’ll call him “Ethel,” has never delivered a more appropriate review. I was eagerly anticipating a spiritual documentary on the subject of Tibetan Buddhism. After an all-too brief 10-minute historical overview, I found myself in the middle of a training film on how to be a monk.

The Fisher-Price PixelVison cinematography documented ritual after ritual, most with the benefit of subtitles, some without. It was as though I pulled into Jiffy Lube for an oil change and instead received a precise tutorial on how to build a Toyota.

Five minutes passed and Ethel took off for the lobby. After a beat he returned with a check of the time. It was 12:17 p.m. By my calculations, that meant we still had a half-hour to go. To paraphrase Elmer Fudd, I twied and I twied Dawai Wama. Fow…, I mean, folding my notepad, I quietly got up and made my way toward the safety of the red exit sign. The only drawback to sitting fourth row center at a press screening is that early departures do not go unnoticed.

Such was not the case, for five paces behind me strode Ethel with the third critic trotting close behind. The unidentified woman declared the film, “Beautiful! Magnificent! And Exquisite!” She would have loved to see it through were it not for a 1:00 p.m. appointment she couldn’t break. Some believer!

Hearing voices in his lobby, Super-Manager Chris Principio came trotting down the stairs. “I thought there was still a half-hour left,” he observed. As if rehearsed, the three of us chimed in unison, “There is!”

A small part of me is ashamed to admit that I lasted all the way through Basic Instinct II and started an exodus from Tibet. If ever a film cried out to be screened in a church basement or packaged as a Barnes & Noble “how-to” video, it’s this one. Strictly for those who worship the all-encompassing beauty of Buddhism, not cinema. Non-believers will just have to make do with Kundun.

Rating: m