“Saturday Night” is an adrenaline-fueled nostalgia trip with pitch-perfect casting
The run-up to the opening night of "Saturday Night Live" is recreated in real time in the latest from director Jason Reitman.
At nearly 50 years old, Saturday Night Live is an American institution — but that, of course, was not always the case, and Saturday Night chronicles in real time the manic 90 minutes leading up to the show's debut in October 1975.
The latest from director Jason Reitman, who co-wrote with Gil Kenan, Saturday Night is an unabashed ode to a motley crew of artists Reitman clearly reveres. As such, it's perhaps a bit too much of a nostalgia-fest, depicting the show's iconoclasm through rose-colored glasses.
For a movie celebrating a counter-culture moment, it plays things fairly safe (case in point, while there is evidence of drug use among the cast and crew backstage, it feels sanitized from other accounts). But perhaps that says more about what SNL has become today than anything else. At any rate, that doesn't diminish the fact that the film is a supremely good time (and far more enjoyable than recent seasons of the venerable sketch show). That is due, in large part, to supremely smart casting.
Universal Pictures
The cast of 'Saturday Night'Instead of opting to fill his movie with names — as biopics and behind-the-scenes stories so often do — Reitman wisely champions a cast that embodies these real-life figures with uncanny panache. Cory Michael Smith brings early career Chevy Chase to life with a spot-on mix of bravado, ego, and comedic timing, while Dylan O'Brien masters Dan Aykroyd's voice, physicality, and insecurity over his sense of competing with Chase for female attention. Meanwhile, Matt Wood somehow finds a way to bottle the unpredictable genius of John Belushi.
The trio of original gals — Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, and Kim Matula as Jane Curtin — capture the funny ladies with aplomb, from their distinctive physicalities to their ribald and zany senses of humor that serve as armor in the midst of this boys club. And though his role is smaller, Nicholas Podany nails Billy Crystal's neurotic, endearing presence on the show's sidelines.
In a surrealist touch worthy of Andy Kaufman himself, Nicholas Braun pulls double duty as both the delightfully eccentric Kaufman and the earnest Jim Henson. And Cooper Hoffman makes then NBC programming exec Dick Ebersol a reserved pillar of sanity in the madness, while owning a truly hideous polyester suit.
The entire ensemble understands the assignment, but if the movie belongs to anyone it's Gabriel LaBelle as SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels. LaBelle first gained notice playing a version of teenage Steven Spielberg in the underrated The Fabelmans, and it seems he might be cornering the market on portraying the younger versions of 1970s entertainment mavericks. As he did with Spielberg inThe Fabelmans, LaBelle grants Michaels a clarity of purpose, an unwavering conviction, and a harried sense that he's barely holding things together. LaBelle's confidence and fake-it-till-you-make-it chutzpah make Michaels the fulcrum of these super-charged 90 minutes, while also injecting enough tension to make the audience believe this thing could fall apart at any moment (despite the fact that we all know it won't).
Hopper Stone/Sony
The cast of 'Saturday Night'There's also a tender, tentative marriage drama with wife/producer Rosie (Rachel Sennott), but that's more a sweet footnote than a substantial plot point. LaBelle demonstrates Michaels' intelligence and eye for talent with acuity, while also making it clear there's a reason this man has remained behind the scenes.
If the film sanitizes the drug use, it at least does not pull its punches when it comes to language, offering a master class in profanity. This not only amps up the laughs but also proves an important reminder of how shaggy and not-ready-for-primetime these players were.
Reitman also is a master of pacing, packing the film's 90 minutes with a head-spinning amount of activity. He manages to capture the adrenaline and terror of mounting a live sketch-comedy show on air through careful editing and an economical writing style. Saturday Night moves at such a frenetic pace that it amps up the stakes of this predetermined outcome.
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Related: The best Saturday Night Live cast members, ranked
This is accentuated by Jon Batiste's jazzy score that evokes the sound of the SNL house band. Reitman revealed that Batiste wrote and recorded the score live on set, and that bears out in the score's improvisational style.
Saturday Night exists within a golden haze of nostalgia, and it can be challenging to process the dissonance of a once-revolutionary show receiving such a traditional origin story. But it's done with such deep affection for its subject matter that it's hard to fault Reitman for it. The film is an infinitely re-watchable romp and a chronicle of a decisive moment in pop culture history. It might not be as provocative as its source material, but live from New York...it's a wildly entertaining love letter to a night of television that marked a cultural watershed. Grade: A-
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