Saturday Night (2024) Co-screenwriter and director Jason Reitman probably made the right choice in not attempting some kind of overly ambitious replication of 'Saturday Night Live'......
Instead, he took a wiser, more modest approach - focusing only on the frenzied, chaotic few hours in NBC's Studio 8-H the led up to the iconic show's 1975 birth on live TV.
Happening in real time, the film plunges you into a hurricane-in-a-fishbowl. We follow around fledgling producer Lorne Michaels, (Gabiel LaBelle), on the edge of panic as he copes with technical disasters, hypertense young comedians working on their last nerve and a cranky, veteran TV crew viewing the proceedings with either bemused resignation or utter contempt.
Here's the film's one major achievement and our favorite thing about it.....in presenting the story like a journalistic snapshot of SNL's agonizing labor pains, the film perfectly captures the cultural upheavals of a new generation of new creative artists flooding the marketplace.
Throughout the 1970's, the new breed of filmmakers - Spielberg, DePalma, Scorsese, Coppola, Milius, and Lucas revolutionized popular entertainment as we know.....
But it took them years to craft their films and get them into the public bloodstream. Thanks to the magic of live TV, the wild, scrappy and hungry SNL bunch did it in one night. (And in an ironic twist, many of them couldn't wait to flee the show to become movie stars....)
Stars were born instantly. And America got their first taste sampling of comedy as written by the kids who were raised on television......a generation that throughout the calamitous 1960's, came to feel betrayed and distrustful of the Authorities In Charge.
And you could sense that outrage and rebellion in every in every over-the-top skit. The picture-postcard view of America as presented in 1950's films and TV was crumbling fast......and SNL took sadistic glee in dumpster diving into the debris for laughs.
There's a load of stuff we could legitimately quibble with. Cory Michael Smith's Chevy Chase, nails down the physicality, but he misses the true spark of Chase's snarky, cooler-than-you-appeal.
The script short-changes any real and genuine depiction of John Belushi by Matt Wood and criminally ignores any indelible portrait of SNL's first female superstar Gilda Radnor (a brief but skillful impersonation by Ella Hunt). And we seriously question the rendering of Muppets creator Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun) as a feckless, clueless nerd bobbing along helpless in the turmoil.
(But then Braun does double duty here, turning up as a pitch perfect replica of the very odd Andy Kaufman.....whose meta-mocking rendition of the 'Mighty Mouse' theme song convinces cold hearted NBC exec Dave Tebet (a superb Willem Defoe) to finally let SNL rebels to hit the airwaves.)
Speaking of cold hearted, let's also not forget to salute J.K. Simmons' frighteningly on target portrait of dead-eyed forever insincere showbiz icon Milton Berle. (Berle eventually got to host SNL, and judged as one of the worst of old school celebs whoever took the gig.)
Ultimately, director Reitman at least succeeds in painting a fast, sometimes funny sketch of a huge generational clash.....with the Lords Of Television finally coming face to face with the children who grew up on everything they consumed while entranced by that glowing box in the living room......
And that's not a bad thing for a film to accomplish, considering the myriad things that could have gone wrong with it.....
3 stars (***). Worth a look. And a must-see for longtime fans.
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