by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O'Brien, Matt Wood, Lamorne Morris, Nicholas Braun, Willem Dafoe, J. K. Simmons
Intro:
… a loving homage to a show that changed the face of comedy, and a time when cracking jokes felt dangerous, alive and even revolutionary.
It’s hard to convey just how important Saturday Night Live was to modern comedy. Younger audiences who have grown up watching random sketches or digital shorts on Youtube will likely never understand how foundational the long-running show is, or indeed how often it came close to collapsing under the weight of its lofty ambitions and those of its creator Lorne Michaels. And short of sitting Gen-Z tackers down and watching their eyes glaze over as you play them the “More Cowbell” sketch over and over, there was never really an effective manner to teach these truths. Well, that all changes now with Saturday Night, the latest movie from director Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Ghostbusters: Afterlife) and the result is an engaging flick that might be a little too niche for newbies.
Saturday Night takes place on October 11, 1975, at 10pm. In quasi-real time, we follow the cast and crew of what would eventually become known as Saturday Night Live as they prepare for their first show ever. It’s an absolute shit fight, with coked up actors like John Belushi (Matt Wood) causing chaos, interfering producers like David Tebet (Willem Dafoe) looking to shut the whole thing down and head writer Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey) attempting to scandalise NBC’s standards and practises. Basically, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) has bitten off far more than he can chew and it looks likely that the entire operation will go down in flames.
That’s entertainment, folks.
Of course, those of us sitting pretty in 2024 know that the show not only didn’t implode but went on to become such a comedy mainstay that it’s actually now (ironically) the very old fashioned comedy dinosaur it once sought to subvert. Still, that doesn’t take away from the kinetic excitement of following an engaging ensemble cast around as they attempt to put out fires, get high or wonder just what the hell they’re doing there.Standouts amongst the cast are many. Cory Michael Smith and Dylan O’Brien are superb as Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd respectively, Gabriel LaBelle and Rachel Sennott do standout work as co-workers and kinda exes Lorne and Rosie Shuster, and Lamorne Morris is great as Garrett Morris (no relation), having an existential crisis in real time. You’ve also got a wonderful double role from Nicholas Braun (Succession), who plays both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson, Matthew Rhys as a coked up, prickish George Carlin and JK Simmons as Milton Berle with a massive ego and an even larger penis!
What you don’t have is any kind of primer to this world, or judicious use of exposition to explain a lot of who these people are. This means you have a trim, streamlined film, but audience members without at least a cursory knowledge of Saturday Night Live’s early years, and the various peccadillos of the cast, might find themselves a little lost in the weeds.
Jason Reitman does a superb job of directing this wild ride, shooting the whole thing in 16mm to really capture that grimy ‘70s aesthetic, and comedy nerds will delight in all the nods and in-jokes that he and Gil Kenan manage to cram into the script. Long story short, Saturday Night is a hoot for the sort of people who spent their youth recording late night comedy on increasingly dodgy VHS tapes. It’s a loving homage to a show that changed the face of comedy, and a time when cracking jokes felt dangerous, alive and even revolutionary. It might have worked better as a six-part miniseries on HBO, with more time to breathe. but in this brisker format it’s a good time not a long time.