2024 | rated R | starring Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Nicholas Braun, Dylan O’Brien, Lamorne Morris, Matthew Rhys, J.K. Simmons, Willem Dafoe | directed by Jason Reitman | 1h 49m | 3 1/2 out of 5 stars |
30 Rockefeller Plaza, October 11th, 1979, with 90 minutes to air before the first episode of Saturday Night Live, creator Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) contends with the massive egos of the talent he’s assembled, sets falling apart, skits not working and a network that wants him to fail.
With Saturday Night Jason Reitman steps away from trying to make Ghostbusters work to a superficial but well put together dive into the inner workings of the first episode of a 35-year-old show. Now that SNL is so mainstream that it endorses political candidates, cries when they lose and your great aunt stays up to watch it, it’s hard to imagine a time when it was counter-culture and on the cutting edge of comedy, but Reitman has captured that time here. When the old guard of Johnny Carlson and Milton Berle (a spot on J.K. Simmons) was threatened by comics in bee suits and the Mighty Mouse theme. Reitman molds this drama-about-comedy like an Aaron Sorkin walk-and-talk movie where we follow Michaels through the halls juggling one crisis after another giving us doses of comedy lore along the way. It’s not quite as sharp as a Sorkin script (last seen in the terrific similar pressure-cooker drama-about-comedy Being the Ricardos), but it is a very good impression.
Most of the characters in Saturday Night are obnoxious and that’s probably true to the massive egos at play here. Even from Michaels who asks for all the keys in the building in the first few minutes, given a level of freedom with the show that is at first a question mark hanging over the movie and then explained with crushingly good detail. The cast is excellent all around. It appears everyone was cast not for their name but for who looked and sounded the most like their real-life counterpart. The most recognizable talents are spitting images of Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Dan Akroyd (Dylan O’Brien), John Belushi (Matt Wood), Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany), George Carlin (Matthew Rys) and weirdly enough Nicholas Braun in dual role as Andy Kaufman and perennially abused Jim Henson. The movie doesn’t glamorize or demonize anyone, just shows what most likely happened. The scene where the two biggest pricks in show business – Chevy Chase and Milton Berle – have an ego face-off is incredibly satisfying.
I love this kind of procedural workplace movie that is paced and cut like a thriller, particularly about the business of comedy. These guys debate over jokes and sketches and question their place in the show. Michaels assembled a hodgepodge of talent, overstuffing the show with people their timeslot didn’t allow for and gets questioned by the network and the affiliates. Not a ton of depth here, but it’s a well-made movie that gives us an appropriately sized snapshot into a piece of comedy history and a lot of fun.