Saturday Night (2024)
Directed by: Jason Reitman
Premise: A dramatization of the debut episode of Saturday Night Live. Less than two hours before showtime, producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) wrangles unruly talent and a skeptical crew to produce an unprecedented live show.
What Works: Saturday Night is a backstage drama and as that it mostly works. The agitated performances and the handheld camerawork and the somewhat cinema verité style create an impression of chaos. There is a sense that this show is going to be a nationally broadcast disaster and Lorne Michaels fights an uphill battle just to get something coherent on the air. The casting is impressive with the actors embodying these famous people, namely Matt Wood as John Belushi, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Matthew Rhys as George Carlin, and Nicholas Braun in dual roles as Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson. The design of the movie keeps us from getting to know any of these people in a meaningful way but we do get a sense of their personalities and public personas and it’s enough to distinguish them. The focus of Saturday Night is not on its cast but on producer Lorne Michaels and the film captures the frenzied state of a producer in the minutes before showtime. Gabriel LaBelle is very good as Michaels, bewildered and drowning but pushing the project to air. This film also coveys what Saturday Night Live meant for the culture and for television and it is a reminder of what an edgy and countercultural event it was at the time.
What Doesn’t: Saturday Night is chaotic by design but it is in many ways inscrutable. That’s a result of the technical and filmmaking choices. The audio is sometimes muddled. It doesn’t sound busy but just unclear and muffled. The whole film takes place in the NBC studio with a lot of the action set backstage but there’s not much sense of geography. The various hallways, rehearsal spaces, and control rooms feel disconnected from one another instead of part of a coherent interconnected location. The film doesn’t provide much context for its audience especially with regard to the characters. The filmmakers proceed through the story expecting the viewer to understand who John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, and Andy Kaufman were but no one under forty (and even that is pushing it) are likely to know or care about these people without a compelling dramatic reason. Ultimately, Saturday Night will probably play best for Generation X viewers who were avid watchers of the show. The larger meaning of what’s happening will probably be lost on everyone else.
Bottom Line: Saturday Night is an admirable tribute to the legacy of Saturday Night Live and it is a mostly satisfying show business drama. Its appeal is limited because the film is geared toward viewers of a certain age and Saturday Night is held back by some of the technical and filmmaking choices.
Episode: #1022 (November 10, 2024)