Saturday Night

The past fifty years have been an incredibly rapid rise and sustained run for Lorne Michaels, the man who went from juggling a thousand different problems in the hour running up to his iconic show's debut to telling Taylor Swift that he doesn't negotiate with terrorists as he tossed popcorn into his mouth after she demanded his staff cut a sketch making fun of her. Among the following problems Saturday Night Live creator and executive producer Michaels was dealing with way back in 1975 (according to last year's Saturday Night about the run-up to the first-ever episode of what was then called Saturday Night) are the following: the runtime was too long, his host (George Carlin, played here by Matthew Rhys) was snorting cocaine and angry about the sketches he was supposed to appear in, his actors were fighting (and one, John Belushi, played by Matt Wood, wouldn't even sign his contract), the network executives (mainly in the form of David Tebet, played by Willem Dafoe) were breathing down his neck hoping he failed, and even Johnny Carson (voiced here by Jeff Witzke) was making threatening phone calls warning him not to get ahead of himself. "It's my fucking network, it's my fucking night" the late-night icon hisses at him. Needless to say, this last one is one of the film's exaggerations.

Saturday Night, exaggerated or not, can all seem like a lionizing official portrait of the Canadian most Americans have adored for fifty years (or more like forty-five, since he had noting to do with the show from 1981-1984), but who can blame director Jason Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan? Just think of all the show has done: It has survived five very different decades through evolving beliefs about comedic taste (winning eighty-four Emmy Awards and three Peabody Awards along the way), it has implanted catchphrases into our collective pop culture minds and practically broken political stars (to the point where now, surely most Americans think that Sarah Palin actually said she could see Russia from her house), and it has launched the movie careers of dozens of stars. Ten years ago, just before the fortieth-anniversary show, Rolling Stone released their comprehensive list of all of the cast members in the show's history ranked (with Season 11 cast member Robert Downey Jr. coming in dead last). Just look at some of the names in the top twenty: future Senator Al Franken (played in Saturday Night by Taylor Gray), Maya Rudolph, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Will Ferrell, Dana Carvey, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Amy Poehler, Phil Hartman, Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Mike Myers, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy (who, it should be pointed out, was a star during the Dick Ebersol years, not the Michaels years), and Belushi. Lorne Michaels deserves all the praise by this point.

The story of the very early days of the show have been told to death at this point, between various NBC specials and the highly recommendable oral history Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, and yet the anecdotes in the film still feel fresh. They're all there, like stand-up comedian and future cast member Billy Crystal fretting about the potential cutting of his number, Andy Kaufman's post-modern "Mighty Mouse" lip-sync, Jim Henson's muppets (the worst part of those early episodes—I don't think the audience laughed even once), and Chase's dreams of bigger things. (It's worth noting that both Kaufman and Henson are both portrayed in very amusing performances by Nicholas Braun.) If you really know your SNL history, though, you also will know which ones they are exaggerating in the movie, like the physical fight between Chase and Belushi. Though there was a rivalry between the two, the real legendary fistfight actually broke out the following season between host Chevy Chase and the man who replaced him: Bill Murray.    

Opening with the cast members' auditions (that is, the actors playing them), we meet the original players: Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien), Belushi, Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Jane Curtain (Kim Matula), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), Loraine Newman (Emily Fairn), and Gilda Radney (Ella Hunt). Lorne Michaels is played by Gabriel Labelle, whom you may have seen in The Fabelmans. Despite all the problems, Michaels can rely on the support of fellow producer Dick Ebersol (who ran the show in the early Eighties after Michaels had briefly left and who is played here by Cooper Hoffman) and Rosie Shuster, a writer for the show and then-wife of Michaels, who is played by Rachel Sennott. Also appearing in the film is Jon Baptise, who plays Billy Preston and who scored the film. 

The long takes, the rapid dialogue, the multiple storylines, and the high stakes can make the whole thing feel like it's from Aaron Sorkin, but Reitman and his team make it work. This is chiefly because it's so fun to watch the actors, especially J.K. Simmons as Milton Bearle, a legend of NBC past (and present, circa the 1970s, I guess) who shows up and taunts those he views as beneath him, like Chase, who can't seem to not pick a fight with anyone around him. (Pretty true; read the aforementioned tell-all book and/or anything ever written or said about Chevy Chase.) 

As for the other actors, the ones portraying the Not Ready for Primetime Players do an effective job of portraying those iconic figures without appearing to be a, well, SNL impersonation. Smith captures Chases's charm and comedic timing but also his arrogance and impertinence; Lamorne Morris demonstrates the exceptional talent of Garrett Morris (no relation) while feeling distant from his younger (and white) cast mates; and Wood, while showing us all those eyebrow raises and animalistic chaos, still gets across to the audience that this man was a superstar who unfortunately was destined for tragedy. The best performance, however, is the lead, LaBelle, who looks and sounds the least like the person he's playing among the cast but whose sincerity and drive really make one want to root for the debut show's inevitable success. Like George Lucas on the set of Star Wars, he's the captain of something truly great that apparently only he can see. As one crew member (Robert Wuhl as the director Dave Wilson) mockingly tells him, "I think I can speak for the entire crew when I say that this is exactly where we want to be on Saturday night!" In the script by Reitman and Kenan, everybody (for the most part) has something to do; it's not simply the Lorne Michaels Show. For example, Dan Aykroyd wants a more specific type of gun for the sketch he's in, Belushi doesn't want to wear the bee suit, and Jim Henson can't understand why everyone is putting his muppets into compromising (and violent) positions. This is all with just an hour or so to go.   

One likely problem is that while it's a fun watch, but it's not particularly funny. There are a few decent one-liners that may make one chuckle, but that's it. This is ironic given that it's about one of the funniest shows of all time. It also will not have the staying power of Saturday Night Live. On a budget of about $30 million, it didn't make even half of that at the box office last year, despite it being a film about a show heading into a highly anticipated fiftieth anniversary (which is only a few hours away as of this writing). Still, it's a must for those who have at least any memories of the show, especially those who were around in 1975 to see it from the beginning. For its younger members who know it mainly for its viral moments (like "Black Jeopardy with Tom Hanks" or "Sean Spicer's Press Conference"), it could serve as proper education for those who don't have time for a lengthy oral history or a Vulture subscription.