‘Saturday Night’ review: (A)live from New York

Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night entertains with a talented cast and kinetic direction that gives crowd-pleasing vibes with the veneer of edginess.

Why does Saturday Night exist? 2024 is the 50th season of Saturday Night Live, so what better way to celebrate than a movie lionizing how revolutionary it is. SNL’s longevity is its ability to remain in the public consciousness even if they don’t watch the show. This movie’s main agenda is to remind everyone about how revolutionary, relevant, young, and special it is at a time when it’s establishment, safe, dated, and in danger of oblivion as the gate keepers have a harder time attracting eyeballs.

Despite a run time of 109 minutes, Saturday Night purports to depict the ninety minutes before SNL’s first live broadcast. Borrowing the stress-inducing constant countdown of 24, the dramedy roams the cluttered environs of NBC Studios at 30 Rockefeller Center at 11:30 pm on October 11, 1975. It makes sense that the story revolves around an ensemble instead of a single star, with creator Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) tying the disparate threads together and Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott) acting as the calm and collected fail-safe. While the on-camera cast crashes into each other before call time, Michaels fights to keep his concept cooking while Shuster keeps everyone else together when it seems close to falling apart. 

Behind the curtain

Saturday Night adopts the same direction and composition that SNL uses in an opening monologue, when the guest host leaves the stage in an “impromptu” fashion while the camera serves as the eyes and ears for the viewers at home. The host breaks the fourth wall and treats the audience as if they’re getting a backstage pass to the hottest show in town. When director and co-writer Jason Reitman (Juno) uses this technique, the fourth wall remains intact while the familiarity of this shooting style primes moviegoers to feel the same sense of anticipatory amusement and exclusivity felt during the monologue. Except this time, it’s a time machine to the past that lets audiences become a fly on the wall of this carefully-constructed equivalent of a historical reenactment (though missing some historical accuracy). Also, films that create the illusion of no or few edits evoke the heritage of greats like Orson Welles and Robert Altman.

The choreography between the actors and the camera-people with the editors backing them up turn the film into a dance without music. Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire) reference sketches from various subsequent episodes to flesh out the various backstage preparations for the show’s debut. By exchanging the truth for widening recognition, it makes the viewer feel rewarded for being a knowledgeable fan and protective of the on-screen characters because they don’t know it’s going to work out instead of bored or resentful of celebrities.

Tonight’s players

Another key to the SNL mystique is the relatability of the cast. They’re just a bunch of underdogs engaging in the “Hey, Let’s Put on a Show” trope, and it works. Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris, no relation) is rife with insecurity and feels as if he does not fit in, which is a subtle nod to getting pigeonholed into feeling he’s only playing stereotypical black characters. Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) is the arrogant cock of the walk until he bumps into an actual star, Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons). Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien) is the most affable of them all, so his good-natured sense of humor makes guys trust him and the ladies love him. Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) is the sweet, whimsical one who sprinkles magic around the chaos. Even the off-screen talent leave an impression, from a lowly NBC Page (Finn Wolfhard) to doubting network exec Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman). 

While watching Saturday Night, many will be too young to instantly recognize these real-life characters and their subsequent iconic status. For those who do, the immediate impression is that this film is stuffed with talented actors who nail their roles and have organic chemistry. It’s not easy to play icons and embody them without falling into an impression, which is the main way this film distinguishes itself from SNL. While most of these actors have varying levels of experience and fame, few of them are instantly recognizable. Take Nicholas Braun, who plays two characters: Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson. Kaufman and Henson are part of a running gag for most of the film, and it will be interesting to find out how many people recognized that the same actor while watching the movie.

The bottom line

You could view Saturday Night as propaganda to argue the relevance of a television show that may not be as germane or eternal as it would like to be. However, this pitch-perfect period piece is entertaining, crowd pleasing, funny and well-crafted propaganda, which means most will not notice or care. It doesn’t even need a physical antagonist, aside from some stuck-up network execs who’d rather bet on reruns of Johnny Carson. The real enemy is the dull, predictable television shows that bore production to tears and makes them willing to commit financial suicide. Maybe Michaels and the current SNL crew can see the spark of Saturday Night and keep the show from falling into that dreaded category.

Saturday Night will be in theaters everywhere on Friday, October 11. You can watch the trailer here.

Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing. You can read more reviews by Sarah G. Vincent here.