Sat­ur­day Night review – unap­peal­ing nepo baby triumphalism

Like Oppen­heimer, Sat­ur­day Night com­pares its pro­tag­o­nist to Prometheus. The film, set back­stage at Stu­dio 8H in the 90 min­utes imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing the first live broad­cast of Sat­ur­day Night Live, in Octo­ber 1975, goos­es an already exten­sive­ly mythol­o­gized com­e­dy insti­tu­tion with fic­tion­al inci­dents such as one fea­tur­ing the first two break­out SNL stars to die pre­ma­ture­ly, shar­ing a pri­vate moment in Rock­e­feller Plaza in the min­utes before show­time. Gil­da Rad­ner (Ella Hunt) is girl­ish­ly euphor­ic with pre-show jit­ters and pre­ma­ture­ly nos­tal­gic, already antic­i­pat­ing look­ing back on the night from the mid­dle age she would, as we know, bare­ly live to see; John Belushi is skat­ing on the ice rink in the bee cos­tume he hates, moody and ungovern­able. Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) comes down to try to con­vince Belushi to sign his con­tract; hav­ing already quot­ed Che Gue­vara to a room­ful of NBC exec­u­tives, he now ges­tures to Rockefeller’s Prometheus stat­ue and explains to Belushi that Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind, which, when you think about it, is a lot like mount­ing a hip sketch com­e­dy vari­ety show in the late-night slot pre­vi­ous­ly giv­en over to Car­son reruns.

The tick­ing-clock, not-quite-real-time nar­ra­tive begins at 10pm, with Lorne Michaels pac­ing ner­vous­ly on Sixth Avenue, fac­ing down a litany of anx­i­eties, some of which real­ly hap­pened: a 90-minute show that ran three hours at dress rehearsal; a cast of big egos already at each other’s throats; a rad­i­cal com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty at odds with net­work pol­i­tics; a set that’s falling apart as the union guys sit around doing noth­ing (glib lib­er­tar­i­an­ism being a stock-in-trade of direc­tor Jason Reit­man, who cowrote the film with Gil Kenan).

Back and forth whip-pans in the 30 Rock ele­va­tors and faked Steadicam sin­gle takes give a sem­blance of fren­zied qui­et-on-the-set ener­gy to dense­ly expos­i­to­ry dia­logue and the intro­duc­tion of famous com­ic after famous com­ic; for laughs, the film’s snap­py, fre­quent­ly groan­ing­ly wiki-ref­er­en­tial dia­logue draws lib­er­al­ly from canon­i­cal bits, and the many pub­lished rec­ol­lec­tions of the show, in both mem­oirs and Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller’s oral his­to­ry Live from New York. So many of Sat­ur­day Night’s jokes work now because they worked in the late 70s, from Alan Zweibel’s one-lin­er about a new stamp com­mem­o­rat­ing pros­ti­tu­tion to LaBelle being sprayed by prop blood pur­chased for Dan Ackroyd’s Julia Child bit (which aired in Sea­son 4). Though Reit­man shows Michaels blanch­ing at the show’s now-famous applause sign, he’s not above cut­ting away from a gag to show an audi­ence laugh, just in case today’s audi­ences don’t under­stand what’s so fun­ny about the orig­i­nal ​“Wolver­ines” cold open. (Writ­ing fre­quent­ly bru­tal­ly cru­el char­ac­ters who’ll do any­thing for a laugh, Reit­man and Kenan are not above raid­ing Red­dit to find old jokes for their char­ac­ters to snap at each other.)

Much of the film is riffs on well-estab­lished com­ic per­son­ae: host George Car­lin (Matthew Rhys) is foul-mouthed and coked to the gills; Andy Kauf­man and Jim Hen­son (both played by Nicholas Braun, guess­ing quite vague­ly in two under­writ­ten roles) are holy inno­cents doing the For­eign Man voice and PBS con­sci­en­tious­ness respec­tive­ly; Bil­ly Crys­tal (Nicholas Podany) is all show­biz schmaltz. Of the Not Ready for Prime Time Play­ers, Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) is a smug, inse­cure alpha jock; Dan Ack­royd (Dylan O’Brien) has a large vocab­u­lary and a his­to­ry of UFO sight­ings; Gar­rett Mor­ris (Lam­orne Mor­ris) and Jane Cur­tain (Kim Mat­u­la) are anx­ious about being tok­enized; Lar­raine New­man (Emi­ly Fairn) is anx­ious; Belushi is a tor­tured artist and bud­ding coke fiend; and Gil­da is an angel. As staff writer and Michaels’ then-wife Rosie Shus­ter, Rachel Sen­nott gets a star’s entrance and a big build-up from the script, which posits her as a sen­su­al tal­ent-whis­per­er and the real pow­er behind the throne.

Michaels and his cast are told it will nev­er work by seem­ing­ly a dif­fer­ent estab­lish­ment fig­ure in every scene: by ter­ri­fied junior exec­u­tive Dick Eber­sol (Coop­er Hoff­man); by John­ny Car­son, over the phone from Bur­bank; by the orig­i­nal ​“Mr. Tele­vi­sion,” Mil­ton Berle (J.K. Sim­mons), who shows up to dick-mea­sure with the ris­ing star Chase; by NBC suit Willem Dafoe; by a net­work cen­sor (Catherin Cur­tain) with a red pen that, she says, keeps the view­ers safe from com­mu­nism and god­less­ness, pro­vok­ing a facts-and-log­ic athe­ist rant from leg­endary writer Michael O’Donoghue (Tom­my Dewey) meant to stand in for the show’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary irreverence.

Michaels was a month shy of 31 years old when SNL went out for the first time; the 21-year-old LaBelle heads a cast of baby­faces who, at their best, cap­ture some of the win­ning esprit de corps that made the show an authen­tic cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non (the bond between Sat­ur­day Night’s Rad­ner, New­man, and Cur­tain is espe­cial­ly affect­ing if you’re at all invest­ed in the friend­ship between the three real women, com­e­dy trail­blaz­ers who stuck togeth­er in the boys’ club). To his semi-estranged wife Shus­ter, Micheals is a ​“stray” who assem­bled this island of mis­fit toys as a sur­ro­gate fam­i­ly. Play­ing the young Spiel­berg stand-in in The Fabel­mans, LaBelle put across a pre­co­cious go-get­ter with a ruth­less edge befit­ting the film’s self-crit­i­cal look at an artist who under­stood mise-en-scène before he under­stood peo­ple. Play­ing anoth­er boy won­der in Lorne Michaels, he’s an alto­geth­er cud­dlier propo­si­tion here, a star­ry-eyed show­biz dream­er over­com­ing the under­es­ti­ma­tions of oth­ers and his own self-doubt – an incon­gru­ous and hagio­graph­ic take, giv­en the cul­tur­al cap­i­tal that the can­ny Michaels has amassed and hoard­ed over the show’s half-cen­tu­ry on air.

For Jason Reit­man, Sat­ur­day Night is a fit­ting fol­lowup to Ghost­busters: After­life, which he direct­ed, and Ghost­busters: Frozen Empire, which he pro­duced and co-wrote. In those films, he picked up where his father, Ghost­busters direc­tor Ivan Reit­man, left off, rean­i­mat­ing the icons beloved by 80s kids who held onto their Ghost­busters toys; here, he turns back the clock ten more years, to Boomer comedy’s break­out moment, and sets his char­ac­ters in motion across his rebuilt sound­stage like they’re the action fig­ures Dan Ack­royd and oth­ers would even­tu­al­ly become. The film is fan fic­tion about real-life celebrities.