I’ve always been enamored with “Saturday Night Live” since I started watching in my adolescent years, which happened to be the Mike Myers/Dana Carvey era of the show. That also happened to be about the same time that episodes featuring the original cast were showing up in syndication.
With the show now starting its 50th season, some things have remained fairly consistent throughout that time. On average, regardless of the cast, your typical episode is about 60% mildly-entertaining-to-inspired while the other 40% is dull-to-unwatchable.
The joy in watching the show is getting to see future stars at the beginning of their careers and the knowledge that an all-time, iconic sketch could unexpectedly pop up at any moment. (“I’m David Pumpkins!” “I gotta have more cowbell!” “Party on, Wayne” “I’m Gumby, dammit” “We are two wild and crazy guys!”)
The new movie “Saturday Night” takes 50 years of cultural relevance and distills it down to its Big Bang moment, 90 minutes before the first show aired in 1975.
The weight of pulling everything together falls on a young Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle of “The Fabelmans”) a producer with a dream of creating a variety show by and for a younger generation.
Not only does Lorne have to deal with the technical difficulties of putting together a live television show, he also has to wrangle the antics and nervous energy of his young cast who are on the verge of becoming household names, like Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien) and John Belushi (Matt Wood).
There’s also pressure from NBC brass, typified by executive Dave Tebet (Willem Dafoe) who is simultaneously encouraging and menacing as he presses Lorne to create a quality product while in reality seeing the show as nothing more than a disposable bargaining chip in a contract dispute with Johnny Carson.
There is certainly some mythmaking going on here as what in reality was probably a month’s worth of disasters gets condensed down into 90 minutes before airtime, but director Jason Reitman injects the movie with a kinetic energy and air of uncertainty that must have filled Studio 8H on that fateful evening.
“Saturday Night” is as much a love letter to “SNL” as it is a joyous celebration of “let’s put on a show!” camaraderie. But more than anything, it’s about the uncertain buildup to the cathartic moment a generation found it’s voice with the bellowing of, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
“Saturday Night” is rated R for language throughout, sexual references, some drug use and brief graphic nudity.
