REVIEW: Saturday Night (2024)

Movie Reviews

I love Saturday Night for many reasons, but one is that it’s the return of the Jason Reitman I missed while he was making Li’l Ghostbusters movies. This is the guy who made a name for himself independent of his legendary father, once again choosing a subject for which he has real passion, one where he can let his own sensibilities come out instead of trying to capture those of another. Saturday Night has the human doubts and fears of Juno, the view of heartless corporate overlords found in Thank You for Smoking, and the desire to break from the accepted monotony and live a life worth living from Up in the Air. But it’s not a retread of any of them; this is a captured moment in American cultural history and the messiness and chaos from which it emerged, like a miracle that shouldn’t have been. This is about the weirdos and rebels and bratty kids who change the world and the old guard who doubt them, hate them, and are scared to death of them.

On the night leading up to the first episode of Saturday Night Live, the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), deals with a nervous studio executive, a cast of comedians who refuse to behave, a principled-to-the-point-of-sanctimony writing team, comedy legends who think he’s a joke, and an executive hell-bent on seeing him fail. Worst of all, he’s facing an entertainment culture that simply doesn’t get his sketch comedy brainchild – and he’s not sure he gets it, either.

Saturday Night is about the uncomfortable stew of innovation, the guts to buck trends and follow your heart, and the arrogance it takes to spit in the face of what came before you. Lorne Michaels is the central figure of Saturday Night, and he talks about himself in the same breath as Thomas Edison, someone who’s about to give the world something it’s never seen before and change the cultural landscape. Is he right, or is he too high on his own fumes? Saturday Night argues that he’s both. On the one hand, he’s a creative force of nature, a dynamo who insists on doing his show his own way, refusing to show the network a script, putting off the necessity of cutting sketches of musical numbers for time, treating any rule or regulation – even something as simple as the protocol for receiving deliveries – as a chain around his ankle. His writers, especially head writer Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey), balk at the idea of cutting lines to appease the network’s standards and practices. And in many ways, they’re right; this is their baby, and the regulations and attempts to control their art, they feel, can only stifle it and make it a carbon copy of everything else.

But they’re also wrong. Lorne Michaels and the SNL cast and crew are the heroes of the film, but they’re far from perfect, and in many cases, they’re disrespectful, ungrateful jackasses. There’s a give and take with upstarts like these making a name for themselves, and they ruffle feathers in the right and wrong ways as they prepare to unleash Saturday Night Live. Lorne wants to do the show his way, to have it be pure, edgy, and surprising, but he gives the people who are paying for it nothing in return. Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), the NBC executive acting as the go-between for Lorne and the network, is at his wits’ end trying to get Lorne to give just a little bit, and while it’s easy to mock him as the square company man, he’s also the seasoned hand who knows how network television works and is trying to keep these punks alive. David Tebet (Willem Dafoe), the NBC vice president of talent relations, is the “villain,” if you want to call him that, who is setting Lorne up for failure, but when he delivers his laundry list of complaints about the production, he makes some very good points. When Michael O’Donoghue rails against the network censor, he looks like a principled artist… until he gleefully insults her religion just to hurt her. He does the same with host George Carlin (Matthew Rhys), an old hand at comedy who doesn’t get the show. The problem with being rebels is that they have no discipline or respect, and if they’re not careful, that could end their experiment before it begins.

Let’s be real, though; the main draw of Saturday Night is seeing some of these legendary stars played by younger actors. And it’s a give and take; nobody is bad, but many of the Saturday Night Live cast members don’t have much to do. Fortunately, the focus is on the best ones, chief among them Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase. Smith is a marvel, capturing Chase’s magnetism, confidence, quick-witted snark, and flat-out arrogance. Chevy is hilarious, but he’s also a diva who thinks the show is really about him, and his mocking of John Belushi goes from funny to just plain mean quickly. And yet, Chevy is human in Saturday Night, wanting fame but fearing he’ll never have it, that he’s a pretender who got lucky. Every second Smith’s Chevy Chase is on screen is magic, and I’d watch a whole movie just about him in a heartbeat. Also outstanding is Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris. Talk about completely embodying a character; you would swear the film cloned Garrett Morris just to play himself. Morris wanders the studio wondering what the hell he’s doing on this show; he’s a classically trained actor, a playwright, a musician, and he’s putting on a bumble bee costume and running around with a fat guy who keeps disappearing from the set.

The others are less impressive, and while almost everyone gets a moment to shine, they’re mostly bit players in Saturday Night. Matt Wood’s John Belushi is funny more for his presence – even when he’s off-screen – than his actual part. Belushi is a nervous wreck who’s so unsure of himself that he keeps putting off signing his contract. Ella Hunt’s Gilda Radnor has a smaller role than you’d think, considering how beloved Radnor is in real life, but she has one terrific moment late in the film; for the rest, she kind of flits in and out, like a pixie on the set, causing just a little bit of mischief to keep everyone laughing. The same goes for Emily Fairn’s Laraine Newman, who, despite getting a couple of big laughs, is just kind of there. At first, I didn’t think much of Kim Matula’s Jane Curtin; she didn’t particularly sound like Curtin, and she didn’t have much to do. But in one phenomenal scene, a quiet moment between her and Garrett Morris, she unveils the entire character as, while acting out a sketch, she unleashes the Jane Curtin we know from classic SNL. This whole time, she was playing the real Jane Curtin, the one we’ve never seen, but she can turn on the persona like a light switch, and it’s incredible. Less incredible is Dylan O’Brien’s Dan Aykroyd, and that’s a real shame. Everyone loves Dan Aykroyd, and he was someone I really wanted to see done justice, but O’Brien – while he has the perfect look for a young Aykroyd – just doesn’t capture his persona or his voice.

But the real star is Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels. This is an outstanding performance, as LaBelle takes what could have been an empty portrayal of an icon and turns him into a fallible, scared, unraveling dreamer, barely keeping it together underneath his veneer of assuredness and aloofness. He exudes confidence, but he’s well aware that this is his one chance to create the show he wants, and he’s a hair away from losing every bit of the soul he’s poured into Saturday Night Live. The people surrounding Lorne have the biggest parts after him, and they’re all great. Rachel Sennott plays his wife and one of his writers, Rosie Shuster, and she’s funny, acting as sort of a handler for the talent; she also reveals Lorne’s human failings, the dedication to his dream that won’t allow personal relationships to interfere with it. Tommy Dewey is excellent as Michael O’Donoghue, the head writer you’re not sure if you want to laugh at or punch in the face. Willem Dafoe’s David Tebet looks like something out of a Tim Burton movie, a kooky character with his coiffed hair, long fingernails, and old lady sunglasses who is nonetheless very conservative about showbusiness and seeks to see Lorne’s experiment go down in flames. He comes to Lorne like a classic tempter, giving Lorne just enough rope to hang himself with. There are some fantastic performances by actors playing other real stars that I don’t want to spoil, but each one is a joy.

And so is Saturday Night. Jason Reitman films it with a raucous energy that captures the chaos and confusion of that night, with a whipping camera that doesn’t know where to look, just like Lorne Michaels and the nervous NBC suits. The pace is as quick as a comedy sketch, there are some wonderful visual metaphors sprinkled throughout (wait till you see the point of the bricks), and the ugliness and wonder of the sound stage at Rockefeller Plaza come through in every shot. Saturday Night is a wonder, an ode to the dreamers and a rolled-up newspaper aimed at the nose of a few bad dogs. This is how art happens, and with this movie, Saturday Night Live is still inspiring it.

Let us know what you think of Saturday Night in the comments!

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