Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night is what it promises to be: A nearly real-time presentation of the 90 minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live came on the air in the fall of 1975, one that demonstrates the chaos of that night.
The film doesn’t provide any overarching commentary about SNL and its place in comedy and showbiz history, give us summary impressions about the careers of the individual people, or give any of those people their “due.”
It’s also far from historically accurate: A lot of these things happened, but not exactly the way the movie shows them, and not necessarily on that night.
But despite all those caveats, I enjoyed the film.
Gabriel LaBelle (the young Spielberg from The Fabelmans and also of the recent indie triumph Snack Shack) plays Lorne Michaels, presiding over SNL in its infancy.
Over the course of the film, we learn that Saturday Night Live was born from a petty dispute between NBC suits and Johnny Carson over Saturday re-runs and that Michaels’ determination to make SNL a counterculture bastion sometimes made those suits (led by Willem Dafoe as an executive) nervous.
The story is told as Michaels interacts with the cast and crew members, including Dan Ackroyd (Dylan O’Brien), Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Michael O'Donoghue (Tommy Dewey), John Belushi (Matt Wood), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) and Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris). Cooper Hoffman is Dick Ebersol, Matthew Rhys plays the original host George Carlin, and Nicholas Braun has a dual role as both Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman.
None of these people are doing direct impressions. Still, they’re mostly accurate, even if LaBelle doesn’t do the Michaels Canadian accent that Mike Myers would later use to voice Dr. Evil. Also, the Braun roles don’t work—Braun is way taller than both men—and I spent the first half of the movie under the mistaken impression that the guy playing Billy Crystal was supposed to be Albert Brooks.
But most critiques I’ve heard of Saturday Night are less than convincing. The movie isn’t that funny, but it’s about a comedy show, it’s not a comedy movie. And Jason Reitman isn’t a talentless filmmaker. His filmography is uneven, but Saturday Night is much better than either of his Ghostbusters films.
Is the movie overly referential to Lorne Michaels and the show and the genius of both? Not really; it’s just telling a story of what happened. Is it too cruel to revered figures like Jim Henson and George Carlin? I don’t think so—the SNL writers really did clash with both of them.
While I’m not sure the film does enough with Gilda Radner, Lorraine Newman, or Jane Curtin, I can’t muster any outrage over Radner or Rosie Shuster played by non-Jewish actresses, which has also been a point of contention. The test shouldn’t be the performer’s 23 and Me results; it should be whether the person is convincing, and Rachel Sennott was perfectly believable as Shuster.
The number of biographies, memoirs or documentaries made over the years about the people depicted in this film numbers in the several dozen. There’s an outstanding new doc about Jim Henson that you can watch on Disney+ right now. Alan Zweibel’s memoir Laugh Lines is good as well.
I also appreciated that Saturday Night doesn’t get too cute about foreshadowing the future, nor is there anyone in the cast with any SNL ties; the filmmakers could’ve cast Larraine Newman, with her daughter Hannah Einbinder, but they didn’t.
The closest the film comes to doing that is a scene in which Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons) visits the set and taunts Chevy Chase (Corey Michael Smith) with some obnoxious bigfooting. The implication is that this inspired Chase to behave in that exact manner every time he visited SNL in the ensuing decades.