Saturday Night
Like the vast majority of America, I’ve watched “Saturday Night Live” several times over the years. I’ve never taken in the lore, nor would I consider myself an SNL devotee. That might be the best way to go into Jason Reitman’s comedy about the chaos of opening night of this NBC staple, which is into its 50th season. If you’re engaged in the lore, and legacy, of the series, this might not be for you. But “Saturday Night” had me hook, line and sinker from the beginning as egos, finances, and taste is all up against the wall, and Lorne Michaels is trying to get a live show on in time.
The screenplay by Reitman and Gil Keenan is not directly adapted from anything but the legend of that night in 1975. That allows them to play a bit loose with things. It makes sense that Lorne Michaels is the main character of the film, even if he feels like the least interesting character of the bunch. Getting Gabriel LaBelle to play him was a wonderful choice; as Sammy Fabelman, he used filmmaking as a way of controlling the emotional chaos in his head, while his Lorne is trying to find logic to the chaos around him on this pivotal night in his life. How does he whittle this episode down from the 3-hour dress rehearsal to a 90-minute live show? Can he get John Belushi (Matt Wood) to sign his contract before he goes on? What’s with the pallet of bricks brought in right before show? Can they find a new lighting guy in time? Can they fix the sound equipment? Can he convince his partner, Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), and network executive Dave Tebet (Willem Dafoe), to let them go live, and not preempt them with a Carson rerun? History knows the answers to all of these questions; in the moment, I loved seeing how they all played out, and I continue to love LaBelle as a screen presence unreservedly.
Let’s face it- one of the trickiest things for an actor to do is embody a real-life performer, especially when that person is only a generation or two ahead of you, and might still be living. I feel like this is where most people’s feelings about “Saturday Night” will be predicated on, and that’s how well the actors tasked to play those iconic first cast members of SNL do. Visually-speaking, your mileage will vary wildly; some of them capture the look well (such as Corey Michael Smith as Chevy Chase and Nicholas Braun as both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson, even if having someone with his allegations around him is a slap in the face to both), while some do well enough (Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Wood as Belushi and Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, even though he’s played as more suave- and less weird- than Aykroyd’s ever been in real life), while others (namely, Kim Matula as Jane Curtain) don’t work at all. (I’m not as familiar with Laraine Newman- played by Emily Fairn- or Garrett Morris- played by Lamorne Morris.) Where most of these actors do successful jobs is embodying the personalities and cadences of these people. Braun and Smith are the MVPs in that, and O’Brien and Morris are not far behind. The women are barely a part of the conversation, sadly; the only female character in “Saturday Night” with any depth is Rosie Shuster, Lorne’s ex-wife, played by Rachel Sennott. Her and LaBelle are the only ones seemingly playing characters with any sense of a story to them, and I enjoyed both of them very much; everyone else is just a supporting character in their story. For me, that worked, because every story needs a protagonist (and they are, honestly, the most likely choices), but I can see people not responding to the film the same way because of that.
Overall, I really liked “Saturday Night,” and Reitman’s approach to the story. The energy. The uncertainty of what could happen. The sense of anxiety. And the anarchic laughs we get throughout the film. I also loved Jon Batiste’s energetic score, J.K. Simmons showing up as Milton Berle, and the feeling that we’re watching something special come together, even if it doesn’t feel like it’s going to happen. This was the sort of comedic energy I was hoping for from the film, and it delivered that.
