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So when Nick is embroiled in a battle royale with a Senator from the great state of Vermont, and the argument moves from the question of health risks due to smoking towards health risks from eating fattening cheese – we know that Nick’s argument feels “wrong,” but part of us believes that he does have a valid point. It’s an incredible feeling to convince someone of something like that. Consider these: big box retailers can be good for local businesses; budget cuts for education can help students succeed; dress code policies can increase freedom of expression. Somewhere, at some point, someone argued those points and won. Not because they’re right, but because they considered the opposition thoroughly, and thought of a way to be convincing. I loved Thank You for Smoking just for talking about this basic idea.

Enough with my tangential musings on debate and its merits. Thank You for Smoking is a film with wit and light drama. Nick faces a moral crossroads when forced with addressing his son honestly with what he actually believes is “right” regarding smoking and its health risks. He is forced to reconcile his professional philosophy and his paternal instincts and it isn’t as easy as some of the used car salesman tactics he’s used in the past.

Not everything in Reitman’s debut film works. The pacing is a little funky – specifically a middle chunk where Nick goes to pay off the Marlboro Man (yes the actual Marlboro Man). But the ending has a nice payoff and the film, while raising serious points, walks a delicate line of never taking itself too seriously. Ivan’s films were hardly ever serious, but he rarely aimed at the heart and the funny bone with such balance. Jason clearly had different designs, and he mostly succeeds in his first attempt.

With his critical accolades, Reitman was well on his way to earning more work, and Thank You for Smoking also earned Fox three times their $8 million dollar budget in domestic box office alone. Every indie aims for those types of numbers, but Reitman was getting ready to really outdo himself with his encore.

Juno

Perhaps replacing Little Miss Sunshine as the ultimate of the quirky indie comedy Oscar hopefuls, Juno stormed onto the 2007 scene with its fast jiving pregnant teen with a name like the city in Alaska but don’t tell her that. It featured such quirky elements as a sister named Ladybug, Michael Cera, an animated sketch opening credit sequence, and parents that don’t yell when they discover their teenage daughter is pregnant. Would you expect anything less from a screenplay written by a woman named Diablo? Juno was a film that many people loved and a few people hated. Jokes about its preggers teenage lead immediately made pop culture waves. People dress like Michael Cera’s Paulie Bleeker for Halloween. Juno cemented Cera’s spot atop the sexy-nerd hierarchy. And it is hard to watch Ellen Page in Inception without picturing her with a baby bulge.

The movie, to its supreme credit, manages to feel realistic and mature even with all of its eccentricity. Juno grapples with a visit to an abortion clinic. She befriends her child’s would-be adoptive parents, and learns that love and marriage and child rearing and everything in between is not nearly as scripted as it seems. And maybe that is Juno’s greatest strength – that she (and the movie) is open to taking us down a path that other teenagers (and movies) wouldn’t.

Juno is lucky to have such a strong group of supporters to help her cope. Spider-Man scene-stealer and Jason Reitman regular JK Simmons plays her curmudgeonly but supporting father, Allison Janney is the surprisingly protective stepmother, and Olivia Thirlby (relegated to what I like to call the “Gretchen Weiner” role of best female friend) deserves roles as well written as this one.
Juno was the dark horse of the awards season that year, eventually losing out in the Best Picture race to the far more grave No Country For Old Men. It did win for Best Original Screenplay, a category that seems to have been made for those films that are considered too “out there” to win best picture. Regardless, the film had plenty of awards season love and it parlayed those positive vibes into a blockbuster $143 million domestically – more than twice what the similarly toned Little Miss Sunshine managed a couple of years earlier.

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