Saturday Night is a film about the premiere of what would be better known as Saturday Night Live, and the idea is better than what I saw onscreen. Jason Reitman directed the film which he co-wrote alongside Gil Kenan. The cast is quite lengthy, but it includes Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Dylan O’Brien, and Willem Dafoe.
This supposedly chronicles the ninety minutes leading up to the first broadcast of the venerable sketch comedy show. All manner of chaos is occurring including a writer getting high, a stage light crashing down during a practice run, and one of the cast members picking fights at random. Lorne Michaels has his hands full trying to get this eclectic, chaotic group of diverse performers to work together to create a unique television experience for the American public. Of course, it’s no major spoiler to reveal that it does work out obviously.
The impressions of some of the more well-known original cast members were not that bad. Corey Michael Smith pulls off a pretty convincing Chevy Chase. O’Brien’s impression of Dan Aykroyd is also impressive. The cast on the whole seems to be well selected. I was not familiar with Lorne Michaels as a younger man, but I imagine that LaBelle did just fine in that role as well.
Maybe it was just me, but I didn’t find the film to be on the whole all that interesting. The antics and chaos that supposedly went on behind the scenes really seemed to be exaggerated. I know there needs to be some allowance for artistic license, but Reitman is asking for a bit too much suspense of disbelief.
It’s not quite to the level of being a dumpster fire of a movie, but there was not much there to really impress me. I just found this particular story to be rather unnecessary. There were no real surprises. It’s a waste of a rather talented cast.
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