Saturday Night movie review: Flashback to a chaotic night is unfunny and tedious

2/5

Saturday Night story: On the Night of October 11, 1975, the cast and crew of a new comedy show need to get their act together for the network executives to greenlight them going live, or get taped and, perhaps, never be seen or heard of again. But with stage prop disasters, stoned writers and tensions between cast members, among other chaos, that’s easier said than done. With only 90 minutes to go and the clock ticking down fast and furious, can they all pull up their socks and get the show on the road?

Saturday Night review: Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night is a slightly embellished retelling of the chaotic Night of the very first live Saturday Night show, which eventually was rechristened Saturday Night Live.

Written by Reitman and Gill Kenan, the movie focuses on the 90-minute countdown at the 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the outcome of which will decide if a bunch of hardly known comics will get their shot at national glory, or if audiences get to watch a re-run of the Johnny Carson show.

There’s a lot at stake for everyone involved with the show, but going by the chaos in those last few minutes, it certainly looked like disaster in the making. The show’s creator and producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) is at the centre of the tale – the only one who can see past the chaos and has a clear vision of the potential his creation has.

The problem is that for the viewing audiences, who may or may not be fans of SNL, there’s nothing engaging or worth caring for in all the backstage cacophony. Did this origin story even need a cinematic retelling? As groundbreaking as that night nearly 50 years ago was, Reitman fails to translate that for the screen. A lot happens, but very little registers, making the 109-minute runtime a rather tedious exercise, despite the unrelenting pace at which events unfold.

What’s worse is that a movie about a comedy show has nothing worth a laugh in it. Or, perhaps, it feels that way because SNL’s never really been a thing for me. You’d have to know SNL performers of yore well to catch on to the impressions of popular names by the cast and figure if they’ve done justice to it or not. I must admit, I could not tell.  

And if the names that figure in the movie do ring a bell – like Dan Akroyd, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, etc. - chances are that you may not only appreciate how they got this show on the road a lot more than I did, but also the performances of actors like Willem Dafoe and JK Simmons, among many others.

Saturday Night verdict: Reitman’s Saturday Night will work for audiences only if it evokes some sense of nostalgia. If it doesn’t, and you are watching it out of sheer curiosity about why it is such a big deal, the experience may not amount to much.

Saturday Night is currently available to stream on BookMyShow