The American Medical Association Alliance is unhappy with the appearance of a specific cigarette brand (American Spirit Lights) in He’s Just Not That Into You and is filing an official complaint to Warner Bros. and Time Warner over the issue. Brooks Barnes reports in today’s New York Times that the advocacy group doesn’t care that smoking is shown in a bad light in the romantic comedy (a character gets dumped for lying about quitting smoking, an offense seen as even worse than cheating); they think any acknowledgment of the act of smoking cigarettes — even if nobody is actually seen smoking onscreen, a la HJNTIY — could influence young people to start smoking.

The smoking in movies issue has brought about much debate regarding censorship in the last few years, but I say bring on the smoking ban. And then Hollywood can get creative with hints at smoking the way it used to use innuendo and other fun tricks to imply sex. The irony would be that in the past, cigarettes were used as such implicit hints (see Love is a Many-Splendored Thing; Chinatown and just about any Hays Code-era film). I also say that this AMA organization should be happy that Hollywood is at least promoting a healthier brand of cigs, such as the all-natural American Spirits. Last year’s underrated male fantasy rom-com Definitely, Maybe went so far as to devote an entire flirting scene to why people should smoke the longer-lasting American Spirits than other brands. Funny, I don’t recall any complaints from the AMA regarding that movie (though here’s an interesting complaint from the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, at least).

Although this complaint wasn’t the biggest film blog topic of the day (that might be whining about Leo DiCaprio’s Neverending Story remake), here are the few other responses I found around the net:

• In addition to sharing a video of the best cigarette commercial ever (it stars The Flintstones), Scott Von Doviak at The Screengrab notes that the AMA should concentrate on other health risks to young moviegoers, such as obesity:
  

  That’s right, all the kids need to see is that bright yellow box and it’s all over. Hey, you know what else comes in a bright yellow box? The eight dollar 12-pack of Butterfinger Bites at the concession counter, along with all the other sugary crap your kids are clogging their arteries with while they watch He’s Just Not That Into You.

• Richard at Gawker, after joking about lonely HJNTIY fans being better off starting smoking, offers support for the complaint:
  

  Really, though, the AMA is right. There’s no reason to put brand-name cigarettes in the movie. It adds some verité perhaps. But we are, again, talking about a movie whose thesis is that the unendingly complex communications between people can be boiled down to something like “men are mean, and women are shrill and lonely.” So.

• Matthew Perpetua also uses the opportunity to make fun of how silly the movie is, but unlike Richard, he’s against the complaint: “With all due to respect to the AMA and its mission, this is almost as ridiculous as a movie about people who still use MySpace, in which a character played by Ginnifer Goodwin can’t find a date.”