By Alex Gilston - November 3, 2024
Saturday October 11th 1975 is a day that will go down in entertainment history. It marked the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live, probably the most famous variety show to ever exist - especially on the left side of the Atlantic. But what does it take to get such an eclectic, and monumental, show on the air for the first time? Saturday Night aims to answer that question in ninety minutes of film that’s a chaotic whirlwind from start to finish.
Saturday Night Live, the famous variety show that mixes comedy and music performance from a current affairs angle, is edging ever closer to its 50th anniversary. It has a glorious history, and its impact on popular culture can’t be understated. But Saturday Night takes us back to where it all began, in an imagined run up to the show going on air for the very first time.
Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) is at NBC studios in the hours before his new show is about to go live across America. The production hangs on a knife edge as set preparations are still being undertaken, cast members are going missing, sketches are yet to be finalised, and the big studio exec David Tebet (Willem Dafoe) is lingering like a crow waiting for a reason to shut it all down. What ensues over the next ninety minutes is a delicious buffet of mayhem.
Jason Reitman comes off the back of the family business in his 2021 Ghostbusters film - Ghostbusters: Afterlife. It was a misfire that represented everything wrong with modern day filmmaking, and every pitfall of the snake eating its own tail nature of a legacy sequel. The lack of commitment to telling an original story left it feeling directionless and flat, and with this in mind it was hard to muster up any kind of high expectations for another film led by Reitman.
If Ghostbusters: Afterlife was directionless and flat, then Saturday Night was the complete opposite. It’s bursting at the seams with energy, and pouring over the sides with life. It zips and zaps, here and there, at such a glacial pace that it even threatens to trip over its own mess. It’s disorder meticulously planned, and cut together, to get your heart racing. It’s so clear, where it hasn’t been in his more recent projects, the passion Jason Reitman has for this story and this world, and it almost makes you want to forgive him for past transgressions.
There are so many moving parts to Saturday Night and it’s a true collaborative effort. The ensemble cast is pitch perfect and not one person brings the team down, from actors who play main(er) characters like Gabriel LaBelle, Cory Michael Smith, and Rachel Sennott, all the way to bit parts played by the likes of Jon Batiste, Nicholas Podany, and Lamorne Morris. Not a person is wasted and each individual is impactful.
When it comes to a film about Saturday Night Live one solitary aspect of it is make or break. Saturday Night is funny, which is good because if it wasn’t then it wouldn’t be worthy of being a film about the show that exudes such hilarity. The jokes we know are famous for a reason, and they’re stitched seamlessly into the fabric of the film. But even scenes and interactions away from this garner a plethora of laughs. One aspect in particular is Andy Kaufman (Nicholas Braun, who gets double the fun playing two characters) popping up in various places around the studio, out of place like a mismatched jigsaw piece.
In fact, the whole of Saturday Night is a mismatched jigsaw. Individual pieces of greatness trying, and failing, to coalesce. All of them have their own merit but you struggle to see how it fits all together, that is until the end when they simply do, despite the stack of odds against them. In the end, that’s what is so great about Saturday Night. Not only is it an interesting recreation of what could have happened on that evening in 1975, but it’s also about going against the grain. Doing things until it sticks, because when it does you’ll have one hell of a show.
SATURDAY NIGHT RELEASES IN UK CINEMAS JANUARY 31
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