Saturday Night

I expected to really enjoy 'Saturday Night'. I was hoping for a fast-paced and hilarious look at a historic night. They got the fast-paced bit down (perhaps even a little too fast-paced for its own good at times) but the hilarity never came. Instead the movie came across quite unpleasant, with forced drama for the most part.

There are a lot of characters in this movie and very few of them are interesting to watch. 1975 was far too long ago for most of us to know who these people are, but it seems like the movie just assumes that we will. And because of the structure there isn't much, if any, time to set up and develop the characters. So we are just told, here's a person who was there that night, enjoy their screen-time. I will say the scenes with Chevy Chase were interesting, but that probably worked for me because I know who he is and am a big fan.

I felt like there was so much potential for comedy and witty dialogue and yet it just never came. A funny situation would arise with a character taking drugs that were too powerful for them, but the movie was in such a hurry to get to the next scene that it couldn't breathe and become a memorable scene.

This probably sounds like a very negative review, and it is, but it's more negativity aimed at what this film could've and should've been, as opposed to the general quality of the film. It isn't a bad film, but it should have been so much more. 6/10.

This is one of those films where you see the trailer and think "How in the hell are they going to pull this off?" It's going to require taking risks, a lot of dramatic tension, some very funny dialogue, and anecdotes we haven't heard about 100 times in 50 years.

Jason Reitman (barring Ghostbusters sequels) can make some pretty decent films when paired with a writer who colors outside the box and digs deep into characters (Diablo Cody, for example, with Juno and Young Adult). Gil Kenan does not appear to be one of them, given this film's "insert the crowd pleaser here" script.

It seems like Kenan and Reitman are a little too cowed by the mythos of SNL to really try anything outside of too-timed "bits" that smack of bad sitcom or over-the-top dramatics that don't really generate any tension.

The cast is, by and large, pretty terrific... except for Gabirel LaBelle. Labelle often seems just befuddled and gaping-mouthed, characteristics I don't often equate when conjuring up the Lorne Michaels *I've* read about and seen over the past half century.

"Michaels was kind of a cypher" Reitman says in the film's commentary. Fair enough, and likely true, but it doesn't help to have this unknowable entity at the center of each scene. Many people have complained that the original core SNL cast is given rather short-shrift, and they're right. Again, Reitman says in the commentary "I wanted people to get to know not only the 80 some characters but the background actors as well...." And that was green-lit?

If you're an SNL fan, this is worth a watch, simply because it's a fascinating glimpse at how a show like SNL can even exist, week to week, without it being a seismic train wreck. Reitman manages to impress us in this regard. As a technical masterwork, it hums. And there are many fine performances (cameos?) here that pop: DaFoe, Simmons, Tracy Letts, Cory Smith's Chase is particularly good.

Cooper Hoffman maintains a hot wired mix of anxiety and bravura as Dick Ebersol... it's probably the strongest performance, with the most face time in this picture.

But having Phillip Seymour Hoffman for a dad, I'd say he's got a bit of an advantage in the genetic gift arena --- I'm guessing you'll see more of him soon and I for one can't wait. Jason Reitman comes from good stock too, but in this case he's maybe not playing to his strengths. In Saturday Night, he's drowning.

There's a scene at the end when LaBelle hires Josh Brener (playing legendary writer Alan Zweibel) at a hellish comedy club that exemplifies two things: first, the exaggerated facts of this piece and it's near miss misanthropy.

If Josh Brener, a subtle almost lethally understated comedic actor, had been cast as Lorne, this might have been a very funny movie.

Saturday Night has some entertaining scenes and moments, and even around the first half is fairly engaging as this pot-boiler biopic about the night of the first SNL (90 minutes to be exact since the film shows us the clock, a mistake I'll get back to), and Lorne Michaels being swept up in every bit of the chaos that he had before him with a show that he wasn't even fully sure what it was going to be. Smith as Chevy Chase (maybe the most interesting character as laid out in terms of how he's set up and treated by other characters like Milton Berle) and the guy playing Dan Aykroyd probably come off the best and most engaging.

Unfortunately, Reitman has that problem that comes upon directors of biopics sometimes - and in his case he probably knew one or two of these guys when he was in diapers - where this feeling that this subject matter is SO important and what happened in this case would have reverberations throughout the history of modern comedy and pop culture and television as a Medium..... well one, we *get* it, especially after the first time you lay it all out (and by the third fourth or fifth time I lost count in the last third of this, especially everything with the Willem Dafoe character (he tries his best but this guy is like many others here a one note joke), and two, if you happen to be coming into this only with a very casual admiration of Saturday Night Live, it can feel all the more grating.

I have that insight seeing this with my better half, who has never watched a full episode of the 70s show (probably not many of you have either, let's be real, I know I didn't see any till the DVDs came out some years ago), and came away not only unimpressed but finding depictions like for John Belushi totally grating and for Jim Henson outright insulting. I get it as well, since unlike with Chase we don't fully get a sense (outside arguably a Weekend Update moment) of what Belushi had as a mad comic genius about him, so he comes off like a rancid lump of a human being (no shade on the actor Matt Wood), and once it gets to that ice skating in Rockefeller center bit (in October, huh) Reitman has settled into sentimentality that is just garbage and is not affecting.

If you feel the emotion coming from the last sections of this, I get that since it's easy to drink up as it's come after Reitman has already re-shaped and re-formed so much history into this one-night-OMG-athon so some may need that release. I found that these moments where Reitman and company look at this story with the "Wow This Was GROUNDBREAKING You Guys" glasses takes away from what really works here which is showing the smaller moments and process - again, when you are showing us how deranged and confrontational people could get BTS and the myriad problems that came with making things for TV in 1975 as opposed to telling us - and building up real character dynamics, which are hit or miss.

Frankly, having the Dafoe character, this snide antagonist who makes an about face with Chevy Chase after he tells a couple of just halfway decent jokes to a room full of suits and spends most of the movie as this "you better or else dun-dun-dun re-run of Carson instead" thread is just counterintuitive; you don't need a villain in this story because time and the 38 different things happening all at once are the engine of the dramatic conflicts (a cross between less stressful Safdie brothers and okay Altman multi-quilt character patterns), and Labell and Sennott and (in as Dick Ebersol as the closest to a company stooge who still fights for Lorne) Hoffman plus a few others know the stakes here are sky high for what they want to do.

I can't say there aren't things here that made me laugh because, come on, JK Simmons as Milton Berle is on par with like Bob Hoskins as J Edgar Hoover, like put it on "Character Actor as X" Mount Rushmore, Matthew Rhys as George Carlin is a Hoot and a half, and there are little nuggets and pockets and beats, like Garrett Morris and his dilemmas, that keep you interested. But overall, aside from the aforementioned issues that come with biopics (and or telling your audience the same thing over and over because you may be cnbically worried they're on their phones while watching, sign of the times right) are compounded by the whole narrative shape which I find flawed too.

One of the things that makes Saturday Night Live when you hear about how it's made so compelling is how from around Monday night to Saturday night everyone is locked in to making this show whatever the hell it will be, and I wonder if it had been spaced out instead over five or six nights- instead of this where it really feels like two hours has passed in the span if half an hour- character dynamics could flow better and even Dafoe could have time for some more meat on that character's skeleton. The structure might be fine if it didn't sort of unravel and deflate where the tension feels lost as Reitman gets us into an unbelievable tract of, oh, Lorne found writer Allan Zweibel one night writing jokes for a hack comic at a bar and hired him on the spot to start that night and... huh? Sorry but does that truly need to be here, especially when it's like 30 mins to air in the structure of the movie??

So the point I'm making is... it's *okay* and while I don't think it's that good overall, it's hard to get mad at it so much as feel some disappointment in what it tries to accomplish. Or, maybe just watch that one documentary James Franco did several years back on a Week in the Life of SNLs team.

Elton John may have sung that "Saturday night's alright for fighting," but it turns out it's even better for comedy-at least that seems to be part of the thinking behind the creation of Saturday Night Live. Though, let's be honest, that was low on the list of reasons.

This film about the very first episode of SNL might not be the most accurate depiction of history, but it sure knows how to entertain. Despite featuring paper-thin characters, ludicrous moments (seriously, no comedy writer gets hired five minutes before a show starts-I'm calling BS on that), and yes, even a cameo involving Milton Berle's penis (Not joking), it somehow manages to pull it all off.

Uh, that is pull the movie off, not Milton.

"SNL" has been around before I was born an "NBC" staple that I've watched some over the years, it's celebrated here with this auto bio type picture from Jason Reitman as it goes behind the scenes to see how the first and original show in Oct. Of 75 went on the air. The movie is funny and full of drama showing how the cast, crew and comedians, struggled to get it all together for Lorne Michaels to go on the air(hey he could even rival Johhny Carson!). The sets, clothing, and dialogue captures times of the early and mid 70's and seeing Chevy Chase, John Belushi, and Andy Kaufman in their early years was a historical laugh feast. Overall not the greatest still a film that any historical film buff should see.