Movie Review: 'Saturday Night' Directed by Jason Reitman

Saturday Night

Directed by Jason Reitman

Written by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman

Starring Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, and Lamorne Morris

Release Date October 11th, 1980

Published October 11th, 2024

Do not approach Jason Reitman’s new movie Saturday Night as if it is a documentary style recreation of the actual events in the final 90 minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live, then known as NBC’s Saturday Night, went on the air. The film likely will not withstand the scrutiny of historians or those who demand complete verisimilitude. Rather, the correct approach to Saturday Night is as a collective pop culture memory of what that night was like at 30 Rockefeller Center.

Saturday Night Live, especially the first through fifth season, have been rhapsodized and mythologized for 5 decades and those myths have coalesced into that classic movie born aphorism from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the Legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Indeed, the first night of Saturday Night Live is legendary and the memories of that night have become myths that have been filtered through hazy memories into what is now Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, a flawed but completely fun and watchable take on how we like to think that first episode came to be.

Saturday Night stars Gabriel LaBelle, best known for his debut in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, as Lorne Michaels the producer and creator of Saturday Night Live. The film will follow Lorne for the 90 minute period right before the very first episode of NBC’s Saturday Night went on the air on October 11th, 1975. It’s a wild 90 minutes filled with endless amounts of drama and mounting issues that Lorne must manage with the help of his wife, and one of the best comedy writers in the world at the time, Rosie Schuster, played by Rachel Sennott.

You might assume he’d rely on his head writer, Michael O’Donaghue (Tommy Dewey) but he’s busy causing many of Lorne’s biggest problems via his war with NBC’s top censor over the show’s raunchy sketches. Okay, at least Lorne can rely on his wildly talented cast right? Well, yes and no, they create their own set of problems, whether it’s Chevy Chase’s (Cory Michael Smith) growing profile and ego or John Belushi’s (Matt Wood) unpredictable fits of rage aimed at the script, costumes, and especially at Chevy’s massive ego. John has also not signed his contract for the show despite the show going on the air in mere minutes.

The rest of the cast are in better spirits as they bounce around the edges of Lorne’s story. Most prominent is Garrett Morris, played by Lamorne Morris, no relation to the SNL original. Morris feels like an outsider as the only black member of the cast as well as one of the oldest and most accomplished. He has no background in sketch comedy or stand up comedy, he went to Julliard and is a successful playwright. He’s even performed in Operas and on Broadway. He’s unsure just how he ended up here and his very brief arc will carry him from uncertainty to acceptance.

Dylan O’Brien meanwhile, brings an air of nerdy expertise to Dan Akroyd, portrayed as perhaps the most reliable cast member, while Emily Fairn, Ella Hunt, and Kim Matula fight for screen time as Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, and Jane Curtin respectively. Their lack of screen time in the movie ironically mirrors their real life fight for screen time on the actual show amid the ego battles of the male cast members. Also circling the fringes of this story are Andy Kaufman and Muppets creator Jim Henson, both of whom are in the first episode, and both of whom are portrayed with similar oddball energy by actor Nicholas Braun in an inventive dual role performance.

Cooper Hoffman rounds out the main cast as Dick Ebersole, Lorne’s closest associate and the go-between that keeps the network off of Lorne’s back. Ebersole is the one dealing with Willem Dafoe as NBC executive David Tebet, who takes on a needed villain role as the man who might pull the show off the air if Lorne can’t get things together in time. He’s got an old rerun of Johnny Carson ready to roll if things truly go off the rails. There is also drama amid the cameo appearances of Matthew Rhys as legendary comedian George Carlin, who hosted the first episode, and J.K Simmons as a visiting Milton Berle.

That’s a lot of balls in the air, a lot of elements to manage and, somehow, Jason Reitman manages all of this chaos incredibly well. Saturday Night is brisk and exciting. The film captures the highwire tension of a live television show while providing moments where we can connect with these human beings who we’ve since elevated to myths and legends. Everyone gets a moment to shine and while history doesn’t shine well on people like Chevy Chase, he’s treated quite fairly in Saturday Night with actor Cory Michael Smith capturing both the ego that became his downfall and the talent that fed that ego. It’s a myth that Chevy was despised by his castmates on SNL and those little moments we get to see the cast demonstrate their friendly bonds are lovely.

Holding everything together is young Gabriel LaBelle who delivers a superb star performance. Whether you believe everything that happens in Saturday Night or not, LaBelle makes it feel real enough. The performance is charming, LaBelle captures the essence of the Lorne Michaels we’ve come to know over the years from his unusual cadence to his cagey and curated persona that only allows us to know as much as he’s willing to tell us about himself and the behind the scenes happenings at Saturday Night Live. Lorne was as much of an egotist as anyone on the set but, as captured by Labelle’s performance, he became a great leader by recognizing and cultivating the strengths of those around him.

Saturday Night is not a perfect movie, one monologue in particular is so stuffed with heavy handed exposition that it stalls the movie solely to create drama that was already well apparent in other parts of the movie. The structure of the film, the film being in real time from 10 PM Eastern right up until 11:30 PM Eastern when the first sketch went on the air, means that a lot of the incidents in Saturday Night feel impossible to have actually happened in this timeframe, stretching the film's credibility to a breaking point. But these issues do not sink the movie. The cast and Jason Reitman’s kinetic direction keep up the energy and excitement from beginning to end.

Most importantly, Saturday Night is funny. The behind the scenes stuff and the stuff that eventually made it to air, was all quite funny. When Aaron Sorkin tried to take us backstage at SNL with his fictional TV show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the main thing he forgot was comedy. That show was so far up its own butt about how sacred this comic institution was that it forgot to make anyone laugh. Saturday Night is funny and charming throughout its entire runtime, recognizing that yes, there are dramatic things happening but there is comedy inherent in that very drama.

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