Reviews

There are several things about this film so clunky and amateurish that they make me cringe. But it kept me glued to the screen anyway. The plot's not the problem: its disjointed nature seemed quite lifelike and realistic. It was very dark, and it surprises me that other commentators can call it comedic and enchanting. It certainly had comedic moments and enchanting moments but I found it pretty wrenching watching a 14-year-old begging her father not to abandon her to her mother, not to mention watching said mother have sex just to try to get money for the rent. But I was moved by those scenes. I was also intrigued by the scenario of the beautiful sister who doesn't have any fun in bed and her plain sister who knows how to enjoy herself. That's not what usually happens in the movies. What bothered me was the following: 1. All the anglo-Australian parts were caricatures of evil (except for one neutral, non-evil shop assistant). Yes, I know that's how Arabs, Germans and South Africans are portrayed in Hollywood films, but I expected more subtlety from this film. 3. Lucia spoke Spanish with a strong Australian accent, and I'm pretty sure you don't do that when your parents are native Spanish speakers. Well, you would if they never spoke Spanish to you, but Lola speaks almost exclusively in Spanish. I don't know quite how I expected the actress (Alice?) to overcome the problem, but it was a problem. 2. Lola looks like a 24-year-old movie star in every single shot, even when her daughter comes back to visit her. While I loved watching her for her sheer gorgeousness, it was hard, despite her acting talent, to believe in her as the mother of a 14-year-old, suffering poverty and stress. All that artfully shot dust never seemed to touch her or her beautiful clothes. Maybe her unchanging beauty was meant to be some sort of statement about how her daughter saw her, but I suspect it was really down to overzealous stylists or the director having a crush on her. Well, it wasn't perfect. I don't even know if I'd say it was good. But it was different, and that's something you don't see very often.

Limau, the last person to comment on this film , writes that Britain has the highest incidence of teenage pregnancy in the Western World. In fact, the teen pregnancy rate in the U.S. is twice that of any other industrialised nation. Check it out for yourself with Google.

And now, back to the film. Like Limau, I disagreed heartily with a lot of the film's message: that unrestricted breeding is cool; that children are sweet and nice and no-one should mind looking after other people's; and that the posher your accent, the more cruel and evil you are. I thought it was shockingly unsubtle propaganda. I found myself thinking afterward that Britain needs both a better housing system and a one-child policy.

But what a film! More than forty years later its naturalistic style still has unobservant people thinking it's a documentary. That may not be such a good thing, but it says a lot for the direction. It's also beautiful to watch, despite the ugliness of its theme. Its hand- held- camera-work manages to be both clever and unobtrusive (watch when the family enters their new caravan for the first time). This film was made more than 40 years ago and, technically, it stamps all over a lot of much more expensive, much more recent films.

As for the content, all the horrible things done to the homeless in the film really did happen to real people in the preceding years, and the film did a great deed in documenting them.

It might have been a stronger film if it hadn't gone along with the myth that children are always quiet and cute and people who don't welcome them into their homes with open arms must be right bastards. If children weren't so inclined to be noisy and messy and unpredictable and demanding and expensive then the issue wouldn't be as serious. However, if the film had been less wholeheartedly sympathetic towards poverty-stricken breeders it might not have had the effect on the British public that it did. I guess most people like to see a bit of themselves in sweet, gormless Cathy and Reg. Everybody should see this film. It's important on several levels. But don't see it when you're feeling down and try not to get all bent out of shape, as Limau and I did, by its unequivocally bleeding-heart message.

All the foolishness and energy of a naive, ambitious young German film-maker with Turkish parents is beautifully observed by German writer(s?) and directors with Turkish parents. The original observation mixes with homages to all kinds of directors. As a non expert, I got the Matrix and the Battleship Potemkin references. Lord knows how many martial arts films were parodied, and was there a homage to the Three Stooges in there? There's a shambolic, happy feeling to the film with its silly plot twists and fight scenes that captures the essence of young male film-maker energy and gives you lots of laughs.

Things only go wrong when the film has to deal with women. Enter the US-style clichés:

precocious pre-teen sister;

eminently sensible mother;

neurotic, self-obsessed mother in law;

unpretty (and therefore socially awkward and untalented, of course) flatmate of love interest;

very pretty (which means lots of close-ups), very confident and apparently very rich love interest, whose means of support is not mentioned, but who looks about 20, studies drama, drives a car, lives in a nice flat and plans to have a baby, without any mention of a job. She solves her problems the Hollywood way; by means of a spontaneous monologue about her youth and passion that wows the judges and the undecided boyfriend in one fell swoop.

Oh, I almost forgot the last and ugliest cliché; the femme fatale who sucks her fingers and wears a leopard-skin corset and looks out from under her lashes at the hero because of his film-making talent.

My boyfriend and I started out laughing every two minutes at this wonderful film. I ended up cringing every two minutes and thinking that the Turkish machismo mentioned in the film must be very strong indeed for the writer(s?) and directors to have observed themselves so well and women so badly. It's not just Turkish machismo, though. They're not the first to have cut and pasted all of their female characters from the big book of Hollywood stereotypes.

Here are the parts that bothered me most about "Thankyou for smoking": The father-and-on stuff suffers from the usual delusion that a child can convincingly adore his father in one scene and innocently soak up his bad attitudes, then manipulate his mother with sophisticated-sounding psychoanalysis in the next scene, then give his father life lessons worthy of Plato in a third scene. Any character who can do all that is likely to be nothing but a cipher, especially if he's supposed to be twelve years old. I know that impossible wisdom and sophistication is a common characteristic of celluloid children, but it really made this film hard to take to.

Then there's the scene with the gun-waving ex-Marlborough man, where the hero gets over his fear so quickly and completely that the next shot starts with him with his back to his embittered, gun-totin' host, leisurely checking out the contents of his mantelpiece. That could have been a great scene, but all the tension, and believability, vanished in the first couple of seconds with one bit of bad direction.

The idea that a professional and very talented bullshit artist could be so easily brought down by a reporter who looks about 19 years old (I know she's older, but she doesn't look it) was ludicrous. What newspaper would ever send anyone so young to deal with a notorious spunkiest alone? What spunkiest would ever let sex get him so carried away that he'd spill his guts so completely? Especially a big blond spunkiest who'd have no trouble getting girls.

By the way, why did the hero's mate in the MOD squad specifically say the reporter was Irish, with blue eyes, when she has hazel eyes and a strong American accent? Can't Americans hear accents?

I just saw the last third of this film, and kicked myself for sitting through "Mrs Doubtfire" on the other channel while this famous film was on. It was dubbed into Spanish, which I don't understand very well, so I really concentrated on the look of the film. I found the clothes and hairlsytles and sets -- all that dark wood and faintly sordid-looking red velvet -- really convincing, as well as beautiful to look at. The sprinting scene, with all that bug-eyed desperation, was also brilliantly done. That "Bonnie and Clyde" rubbish, made at more or less the same time, I think, and set in the same era, was on the telly a month or two ago. It really makes you appreciate the quality of this film. I thought Susannah York went nuts quite convincingly and tragically, though I was surprised that showering in her clothes was enough to convince the other dancers that she'd lost it. My biggest gripe is that Jane Fonda kept looking fresh-faced and beautiful for far too long, even as Susannah York got convincingly haggard. And right at the end, when she and Robert are out there looking at the sea, they don't move like exhausted people. After just one hard night when I was young one would move a lot more slowly and erratically than those two moved after supposedly dancing for more than 40 days.