Saturday Night by Jason Reitman hit theaters nationwide on October 11, 2024.
This 90-minute movie showcased the 90 minutes before the first-ever live premiere of Saturday Night Live back in 1975 to celebrate the show’s 50th season.
This film includes a stacked ensemble cast, which can usually be a worry to most, but it felt like everyone was doing their part in this movie. No speaking part felt useless and everyone knew their role in this story. The chemistry felt real, and the fake dressers and make-up artists helped create a realistic environment for viewers to find themselves in.
Although this film is not a typical action movie with superheroes fighting villains, there is a different kind of action. Non-stop behind-the-scenes action to be exact. Lorne Michaels, the producer and creator of the show, played by Gabriel LaBelle is one of our main focuses. We see him running around trying to make sure things don’t catch on fire, which spoiler alert, they do.
The success of the show is on Lorne’s shoulders, and audience members can feel his anxiety and his want for the show to be successful, even with the NBC executives rooting against him. Added on top of the fact that everything that could go wrong was going wrong, including people quitting, bricks not being laid, and lights breaking. It was a miracle this show even made it to air.
One of the struggles throughout the film that Lorne is faced with is his stars running wild. Garrett Morris, played by now Emmy-winner Lamorne Morris, is going through an identity crisis, trying to figure out why he is even there. Cory Michael Smith’s Chevy Chase is trying to hound his fiancé Jacqueline Carline, portrayed by Kaia Gerber. Matt Wood plays John Belushi, who is in a will he won’t he relationship with the show, avoiding signing his contract.
A standout from this film to me is Andrew Barth Feldman. Coming off of his leading role opposite Jennifer Lawrence in No Hard Feelings, it is clear that he is the future of comedic actors. He plays Neil Levy, Lorne’s right-hand man. Running around the whole film doing whatever Lorne tasks him with, he easily is seen becoming stretched thin. One of my favorite scenes from the movie is when Neil locks himself in the room after taking a hit of a joint, making him panic and shut down. The whole cast of SNL comes and finds him and gets him out of his terror. It was a very cute scene that reminded me that this cast was like a family. But the comedic performance that Andrew brings to this sequence is undeniable.
The camera work of this movie is also a key factor in what made it so good for the audience, with it feeling as if we were traveling through Studio 8H and Rockefeller Center, even though most of the filming took place in Atlanta. I felt like a fly on the wall due to the cameras constantly following the actors and listening to their conversations.
As a fan of the current Saturday Night Live, it gave me a deeper appreciation for what it takes to put on this show every week. It takes an army to put this on, and having this ensemble cast proves just that. No assistant, page, costume designer, or lighting operator is not doing something important. Finn Wolfhard plays an NBC Page whose job is to find audience members for this live show, and we see him struggling, but in the end filling up Studio 8H, which is a large reason for the success of the first episode, because of the receptive audience. Each part is needed to build a puzzle, just like in this movie and in the real show.
While this movie was undeniably funny, it left me wanting more. Certain characters felt underdeveloped like the three woman cast members Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, and Jane Curtin played by Ella Hunt, Emily Fairn, and Kim Matula respectively. It felt as if they were just there because of them being the main characters in the cast, rather than giving them a backstory or conflict. Instead, we see more of Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) and how he is fighting Lorne to keep his set on the show. That is the downfall of having a stacked ensemble cast with an incredible story to tell, not being able to develop every character in a way that the audience can connect with them.
I have to give a quick shout-out to Dylan O’Brien’s (Dan Aykroyd) shorts, who stole the show, thank you to Rachel Sennot’s Rosie Shuster, a writer for the show, and Lorne’s wife who got her moment to shine in this movie, who put him in these shorts for her sketch.
The movie concludes with the opening skit of the show, ending with the iconic lines “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night”. The ending was a smart choice as everything before was the cumulation to the launch of this iconic piece of television. I know it made me want to go watch the first episode and see the results myself, and I am sure it did others.
I thoroughly enjoyed this anxiety-inducing movie and hope that they remake this with a modern SNL. I would do anything to see a film interpretation of Pete Davidson and Timothée Chalamet’s TikTok hit “Yeet Yeet” from the “Rap Roundtable” sketch or Marcello Hernandez’s recent hit as Domingo in “Bridesmaid Speech”.