'Saturday Night' is a Flawed, Fictional, Blast
Approaching fifty years old, SNL (Saturday Night Live) is a ubiquitous piece of entertainment that reshaped the variety show format. It created something of its own that still reigns supreme compared to other sketch shows. Making a movie about how something popular all started is a common generational piece of filmmaking. Saturday Night could have been the typical biopic where we met famous figures before they became famous. It could have been a movie that goes from showing everyone auditioning for the show to being on it. The movie could have gone into the cast's backstories, making the movie an overstuffed, sentimental piece of propoganda. Seeing how lazy the screenwriting was in Ghostbusters Afterlife, it wouldn't surprise me if director Jason Reitman took the usual route. Thankfully, Saturday Night is not your standard biopic.
The film's point of tension is a ticking clock. There are only two hours until Saturday Night (before it was called Saturday Night Live) airs. The film starts with Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) racing around the set of the show. Chevy Chase (Corey Michael Smith) is sitting at his desk while the feedback monitor broadcasts his reading for the men in the control room. There's no formal introduction to the cast, boring exposition, narration, or opening title to give background on what's happening. The film just slams straight into the story with pure adrenaline. The movie frequently cuts to a clock that shows the hours ticking by the mere minutes. Those two hours will soon be up. Although we know what the outcome of the show is, it's a thrill to see how much of a train wreck it was in making it.
The film's tagline is: "The writers are stoned. The set is on fire. The sound system is f*****. The actors are physically assaulting each other. The crew is in open revolt. They have 90 minutes to get their s*** together, or the network is pulling the plug." I would never write all of that in my review, as it gives away the entire movie. But since the studio decided to ruin most of the movie with its poster alone, I may as well get into some of the specifics. The movie is probably far from accurate. I doubt a light fell in front of everyone on set in the middle of rehearsal. Or that John Belushi had a mental breakdown where he quit later to be found by Lorne Michaels ice skating in Central Park, less than an hour before airtime. That scene, in particular, I have a big problem with as it completely breaks away from the film's sense of urgency.
Outside of Central Park and one other scene, Saturday Night is a nailbiter. Maybe making the show wasn't as wild as the film depicts it, but it captures the anxiety Lorne Michaels must have felt when producing the first episode of Saturday Night. The movie isn't meant to be reality as much as it's meant to be heightened reality. It's not a film made to examine the psychosis of the cast members. Saturday Night is Lorne Michael's story. It's about a producer who keeps his cool during chaos. He wants to snap. At one point in the picture, he lets his frustration out on a building's window, but that's about as far as Michaels gets. At the heart of it all is about a man who tries to build success off a novel program he can't articulate to anyone. Everyone demands to know what Saturday Night is. All Michaels can tell them is to wait to find out. The only way an artist can prove themselves is through their delivery. It's not until the end that we see results. Yet we don't see enough of them. The film cuts to the credits, robbing its audience of a victorious finale.
If it weren't for my nostalgia for SNL, I probably wouldn't have liked the film as much as I did. If you know nothing about SNL's past, you'll either be curious or bored by this movie. Saturday Night is like a Marvel film, where we're waiting to see our favorite hero pop up on screen. It's nice that Jason Reitman didn't hire household names to play the iconic cast. There's a distraction in seeing a movie star play another movie star. You're not paying to see the story as much as to fulfill your curiosity to see how good of a job that famous actor did pretending to be someone else who was pre-famous. Unfortunately, that convention is broken when J.K. Simmons comes on the screen as Milton Berle. Simmons is fine in the role. But I don't think I needed to see Milton pull his dong out to make a point to Chevy Chase. Yes, that happens in the movie.
Since the film doesn't spend time building backstories for Saturday Night's cast, the show relies more on impersonations than fully-rounded characters. In a way, that's a fitting angle since SNL loves to do impersonations. Although the film takes a hyper-realistic perspective, it's incredibly honest about the cast.
Saturday Night doesn't play itself like a love letter to its celebrity figures. Folks like the late George Carlin (Matthew Rhys) are portrayed as a raging cocaine addict who treats everyone around him like they're dirt to scrape off his boot. George Carlin is my favorite comedian, but I can admire a portrayal of him that isn't fan-friendly. Similar to Carlin, John Belushi's (Matt Wood) drug problems make him an irritable maniac who looks like he's about to walk out the door at any given moment. The film doesn't show Belushi doing drugs. But we all know how he died; thus, it's implied.
To push his buttons is Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith). Chase's negative reputation proceeds him in the film. At one point, John Belushi doesn't want to get shaved before the show. So Chevy tells him not to worry; all there will be left is gobs of fat where the chin should be. The comment leads to a physical altercation. Despite the film's wackiness, it's believable this part actually happened. Although portrayed as a self-absorbed, egotistical d*** bag, Chase does have a redeemable moment in the film where he comes to Lorne Michael's aid when he's struggling to present his show to a bunch of studio heads.
On the more human side, Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien) is a bit of a nut, except not the certifiable kind. He's simply peculiar. Aykroyd is caring towards his cast members while maintaining professionalism. Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) believes Saturday Night is beneath him. He studied at Julliard and performed on Broadway. Working for a crumbling television show where he was cast just as "the black guy," playing minimal roles feels like a waste of his time. So, he gets high shortly before showtime to make up for his sense of regret.
The true angel of the set is Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt). She has an exuberant energy that screams positivity. For all its emotionally challenged characters, Lorne Michaels is romanticized in this film. It would make sense since Lorne Michaels is the protagonist of the story. Unfortunately, he only comes across as a great guy who's the top animal wrangler in the middle of a zoo. There's not much complexity to him. It also doesn't match up to the type of person he's described as in interviews I've seen on him throughout the years. Ironic since it's so unafraid to paint unglamorous pictures of the rest of the cast.
As strong as its strengths are, Saturday Night cannot help but come across as an inferior spiritual knockoff to Birdman. Both movies take place in a theater before their big show is about to go off. In both films, sheer madness causes our hero's dream to turn into a nightmare until they prove everyone wrong in the end. Birdman was shot in one continual shot with some clever bits of editing to hide the cuts. The idea was to get into Riggan Thompson's (Michael Keaton Douglas) mind. It showed how everything was spiraling around him with no escape from the destruction he caused. It also is only 12 minutes longer than Saturday Night. Around Birdman's 2 hour narrative, the movie was able to flesh out its wide cast. Why couldn't Jason Reitman do this? Shoot the film in one shot to capture the dizzying mess Lorne Michaels's head is going through rather than sticking to a traditional shot list.
Secondly, I know I said this movie is Lorne Michael's story, but its cast could have a little more dimension instead of being SNL impersonators with foul mouths. The most nuance that's given to the other characters is through one of the show's writers, Rosie Shoester (Rachel Sennott). Shoester is married to Lorne Michaels, but Michaels is so enamored with his work that he sees Rosie more as a writer than his wife. I would have liked to have seen a few more relationships like that develop while the clock to produce the show was ticking. Regardless, Saturday Night is an exciting, outrageous look at the dysfunctional world of entertainment.
Saturday Night opens in Chicago on October 4 and in theaters nationwide on October 11
