Saturday Night (2024)

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://talkingfilms.net/saturday-night-review-capturing-the-chaos-and-magic-of-snls-first-broadcast/

"Saturday Night successfully captures the frenetic energy and spontaneous magic of the behind-the-scenes world of SNL, transporting us to the heart of the organized chaos of a live broadcast.

Through engaging camera work and fast-paced editing, Jason Reitman and his team recreate the palpable nervousness and unique humor that shaped an iconic show.

It's a celebration of the talents who came together to create one of the most enduring, influential phenomena in television history. An irresistible tribute to all who dared to dream big, even when success seemed unlikely."

Rating: B+

I think my problem with this was that I remember seeing that opening sketch not long after it was aired in 1975 and it wasn’t funny. That’s kind of what I felt about this whole thing as it in real-time takes us through the ninety minutes before transmission of its creative producer Lorne Michaels (Gabrielle Labelle). The show is nowhere near ready to go, with three hours worth of content slated to fill ninety minutes. His lead talent - George Carlin (Matthew Rhys) thinks the whole thing is rubbish, and John Belushi (Matt Wood) and Chevy Chase (Corey Michael Smith) can’t stand the sight of each other. Meantime, network boss Dave Tebet (Willem Defoe) if menacing about the place with one of those totally supportive faces a football manager gets before he’s fired and the presence of Andy Kaufman (Nicholas Braun), a llama and a pile of bricks doesn’t leave us with much hope it’ll ever make the air, either. What ensues may well have been the very messy, caesarean, birth of an American institution but for those of us elsewhere in the world, this humour is passé and LaBelle’s passing resemblance to Dudley Moore seems to further intensify just how desperate this nation was to get past the scrupulous thought police (Catherine Curtin) who thought a golden shower was something from a Disney movie. It’s designed to bring together just about every form of innovative comedy, and a very extended version of Janis Ian singing “At Seventeen”, to signal a new direction for late night television but that doesn’t make this either particularly entertaining or enlightening. It’s worth a watch, but if this show isn’t already a part of your psyche, then it’s unlikely this effort will change that.