Thank You For Ending

I'm an ex-smoker so I get to be sanctimonious about these smelly, lethal instruments of mind control. I support most efforts to wean people from their death embrace. I have no problem with satire. I've committed it myself on occasion. So I had reasonably high hopes for the movie, Thank You for Smoking. Here you have one of the most lampoonable, indefensible, scummy industries imaginable, but all the filmmakers managed to do was make snide, morally nihilistic jokes. Is it even worth pointing out that the cigarette industry is lying to us through lobbyists? Is it worth pointing out that lobbyists have different morals than, say, Jesus? And if the point was to criticize the tobacco industry and its lobbyists, why did the filmmakers also lampoon their enemy, a cartoonish Vermont Senator tediously sketched in by the usually better Bill Macy? Were they trying to be fair and balanced? I kept waiting for the plot to twist, for something to change once the "big idea" of the movie was presented. But nothing happened, nothing changed. This movie never made it out of the pitch session.Being prone from time to time to hyperbole, I couldn't help but wonder, as I sat there in the darkness stuffing popcorn into my piehole to stem the boredom, if the big story here wasn't Big Tobacco, but Big Hollywood. I mean is the American public so narcotized by junk food, TV, cigarettes, booze, prozac, and infotainment news that this actually passes for a storyline?Then I started thinking what the hell is Katie Holmes doing in this movie. She's what, twelve? We're supposed to believe she's a hot shot DC journalist who can place a profile of a tobacco lobbyist on the front page of The Washington Post (cleverly disguised as "The Washington Probe")? The filmmakers didn't even bother rewriting the part for someone younger.Then my mind really started working (you see I had to think about something while the thing unspooled ). Let's say I were an A-List Hollywood Actor whose recent impregnation of a much younger actress, along with certain personal quirks of religious freakitude, had alienated my ticket-buying fanbase. Could I use my influence to have the underaged mother of my spawn cast in a role that would necessitate her getting nailed on screen in a variety of positions thus establishing her full-blown adulthood?Hmmm. Mebbe.Anyway here are some other reasons I had to think about other stuff while watching this movie:1) Making little kids say things only adults would say might have been funny the first time a writer did it. Now it's just cheap.2) Inventing characters whose only purpose is to sit around and allow the protagonist to develop his character is the very definition of lame.3) Not all divorced women are bitter about their exes; and not all their new husbands are wankers.4) If you're trying to make a libertarian critique of the burgeoning nanny state, figure that out first, then write the script. Don't just tack it on at the end.On the plus side, Aaron Eckhart is good eye candy.