Saturday Night Live has been around for a long time; its 50th season premiered this fall on September 28th. The show has been nominated for over 300 Emmys, winning 90, with the original cast inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame, and everyone who has watched the show has a favourite cast, most likely the one from their teen/young adult years. The show mostly being live comedy and musical performances (with a couple of pre-recorded bits) is its hallmark, but that makes it a challenge to pull off, especially with guest hosts who are not always comedians. The film Saturday Night looks at that 90 minutes before the first Saturday Night Live, and I think if you remove credits and the brief actual start of the “live” show, it is probably 90 minutes or close, making it a film that happens in real time.
The film is frantic to give you that energy of what it means to be racing the clock to be ready for a live show. But also, much of the premise is that it’s a live show that is being set up to fail. I don’t think any audience member will think that there is a chance they will fail because we know what becomes of Saturday Night Live (50 seasons so far) and this cast of characters (Television Academy Hall of Fame). And we know the name Lorne Michaels (portrayed by Gabriel LaBelle). But while the chance of failure and never going live is great at driving the tension of the night for the characters, particularly Lorne, knowing the result is not a detriment to the audience experience because I think the heart of the film Jason Reitman (along with co-writer Gil Kenan) was interested in telling could have been told using the lead up to any of the live show. Setting it around the first episode served to provide narrative structure and cast it with the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players,” thus giving the film a shorthand so that the lean real-time run time could be effectively utilized.
If you are looking for a film that is filled with lots of comedic moments because it is set around comedy, look elsewhere, while the film is billed as a comedy-drama, it leans more into the drama to build the tension of the moments. There are good performances from comedic actors but the comedy is largely more in character work than from banter. There is also comedy that comes from using the form of SNL, in which actors portray multiple roles. Nicholas Braun portrays both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson in the movie, while he was originally only supposed to play Henson, he was asked to take on the dual roles when Benny Safdie was no longer available to play Kaufman, a small thing that because of good make-up and costuming will be unnoticeable to many watching the film (I had to point it out to my father, whom I watched the film with), but it was a little thing felt just like the art imitating the art. Some of the best jokes/bits come from either his Kaufman or Henson, particularly stuff from him as Henson about how the writers are disrespecting his muppets.
Canadian SNL fans tend to know that Lorne Michaels, his first wife Rosie Shuster (portrayed by Rachel Sennott), band leader Paul Shaffer (portrayed by Paul Rust), and Dan Aykroyd (portrayed by Dylan O’Brien) are all Canadian and that Gilda Radner (portrayed by Ella Hunt) got her start in Toronto, so while ‘New York’ may be part of the show’s opening welcome, Canada was deeply part of its beginnings. Saturday Night may not make many references to these roots, but Gabriel Labelle (Lorne) is himself Canadian, and Jason Reitman is Canadian-American, so like SNL itself, the film carries its Canadianess with it even if it presents as New York. So, I’m kind of surprised that the principal photography was done in Georgia and not Canada.
Saturday Night is in theatres now.
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