If frequently thinking ‘Wait, that’s not actually how that happened!’ will ruin your night out, then do yourself a favor and stay away from the new Saturday Night Live movie.
If you can forget or not worry about the show’s actual history, the Jason Reitman-directed Saturday Night offers an entertaining but highly condensed and dramatized account of the 90 minutes before the first episode of the now-famous late night sketch comedy show went live for the first time.
That means many of the events depicted here did not happen on this particular night. If half this much had actually gone wrong, the nefarious network executives depicted in the movie would have been well within their rights to preemptively pull the plug, as they threaten to do here.
In an attempt to ramp up the drama and quickly illustrate the personalities and importance of the show’s early cast members, Saturday Night stuffs various events, conflicts and sketches from throughout the show’s early years together in sometimes logical and sometimes unnatural ways.
For example, in the movie Chevy Chase is basically offered a job as Johnny Carson’s successor not after becoming the first breakout star of Saturday Night Live, but instead after spending about 45 seconds entertaining a room full of boozed-up station owners before the first show even airs.
Saturday Night focuses primarily on show creator and producer Lorne Michaels, played as an understandably overwhelmed but ultimately unflappable neophyte by Gabriel LaBelle. Brief time is spent with each of the seven original SNL cast members, with Lamorne Morris’ Garrett Morris (no relation), Matt Wood’s John Belushi and Cory Michael Smith’s Chase getting a bit more of the spotlight than everyone else.
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Since the story is largely focused on backstage dramas, skits are recreated only briefly and often in partial early rehearsal form, minimizing what could be dangerous direct comparisons to some of the most beloved sketches in Saturday Night Live history. Nobody overplays their part. In his short screen time, Wood shows Belushi not just as a combustible, coke-loving tornado of a man, but also as a sensitive and insecure artist sincerely worried about selling out.
Apart from Chase and J.K. Simmons’ Milton Berle – who are depicted as unlikable, womanizing slime balls – everybody is portrayed in a very gauzy and flattering light. Labelle’s Michaels struggles but admirably keeps his cool and finds a footing as the show’s leader even after every executive, cast and crew member possible comes to him with an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks and catastrophes.
As you’ll predict early into the movie, it all wraps up very neatly, with everybody having exactly the well-timed breakthrough or revelation they needed to have in order for the show to successfully launch. Your best bet might be to think of Saturday Night as big budget, well-made and highly reverential fan fiction. On those terms, there’s fun to be had here.
Saturday Night is now playing in select theaters, and opens nationwide on Oct. 11.
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Gallery Credit: Matthew Wilkening