The Hobbit comes under fire for scenes of pipe smoking
Group also criticizes tobacco use in Skyfall, Django Unchained
The pipe-smoking creatures from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey have earned a thumbs-down rating from a California group that monitors tobacco use in movies.
Youth reviewers with the group — called Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails — picked The Hobbit as 2012’s Thumbs Down! Movie in its Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! Project.
“Director Peter Jackson decided pipe smoking in the J.R.R. Tolkien books deserved preservation in his movie adaptation,” the group says in a release.
“Not so with Thumbs Up! Award winning movie The Avengers, a smoke-free action thriller where the cigar-chomping comic book character Nick Fury lost the stogie in the movie version.”
In the actor category, Bond girl Bérénice Marlohe earned a Thumbs Down! award for her character’s glamorous portrayal of tobacco use in Skyfall, along with Leonardo DiCaprio for his role as a vicious slave owner in Django Unchained.
Thumbs Up! actor award winners included Jennifer Lawrence and Colin Farrell for their smokeless appearances in multiple 2012 films.
They were the exceptions. According to the group, 83 per cent of 2012 movies included positive messages about tobacco use — up from 63 per cent in 2011.
The Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! Project is designed to reduce the glamorization of tobacco in movies by enlisting student volunteers, aged 14 to 22, to watch films and share their findings.
Its so-called Hackademy Awards raise awareness of how tobacco use in movies influences youth. A study by Dartmouth College has found that 44 per cent of adolescents who try smoking in the United States do so because of exposure to tobacco use through movies. Scenes with stars smoking intensify this effect, and in 2012, 23 per cent of actors smoking on screen were stars, up from 14 per cent in 2011.