Certificate: TBC

Running Time: 109 mins

UK Distributor: TBC

UK Release Date: TBC

REVIEWED AT TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024

WHO’S IN SATURDAY NIGHT?

Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Lamorne Morris, Kim Matula, Finn Wolfhard, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Kaia Gerber, Tommy Dewey, Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, J. K. Simmons, Jon Batiste, Naomi McPherson, Taylor Gray, Mcabe Gregg, Nicholas Podany, Ellen Boscov, Billy Bryk, Joe Chrest, Catherine Curtin, Leander Suleiman, Paul Rust

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Jason Reitman (director, writer, producer), Gil Kenan (writer, producer), Jason Blumenfeld and Peter Rice (producers), Jon Batiste (composer), Eric Steelberg (cinematographer), Nathan Orloff and Shane Reid (editors)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

The behind-the-scenes chaos before the first-ever Saturday Night Live…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON SATURDAY NIGHT?

For almost fifty years, one night has dominated the world of comedy. Saturday Night Live, the iconic variety show from producer Lorne Michaels, has birthed the careers of comic icons like Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon and more, and has become the gig of gigs for a number of celebrity hosts and musical guests, many of whom have received a significant boost in their prospects just from appearing on the show.

But what of the one night that started it all? What seems like an average production schedule nowadays was surely a chaotic fiasco when nobody knew what the show would even be, and must have caused so much stress and anxiety that no amount of medication could calm. This is something that director and co-writer Jason Reitman sets out to discover in Saturday Night, a suitably pressured and impressively executed account of what it must have been like to be backstage at Studio 8H in New York’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza, on that fateful evening of October 11th, 1975.

That is the exact date on which Saturday Night takes place, beginning promptly at 10pm and leading in real-time to the 11:30pm launch of the first-ever live show. As you can imagine, the atmosphere behind the scenes is tense, to say the least. The writers and crew members are racing to finish sketches and sets in time, when they’re not at each other’s throats. The cast members – including Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien), Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) and John Belushi (Matt Wood) – are busy getting high and picking fights, and in the volatile Belushi’s case refusing to sign his contract.

Meanwhile, NBC network executives, among them an intimidating Willem Dafoe, are nervously gathering with full expectation that the show is going to fall flat on its face, with reruns of Johnny Carson ready on standby. All the while, young producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) is rushing about trying to get everything under control, and with so much riding on this initial live show – not just his and his performers’ careers, but the innovative maverick creative spirit that could well usher in a whole new generation of TV pioneers – to say he’s stressed would be putting it very, very mildly.

Between Anora and now Saturday Night, it’s proving to be an exciting time for pressure-cooker cinema. Reitman, more so than any other film in his esteemed career, drags the viewer on an endlessly chaotic journey through his and co-writer Gil Kenan’s fictionalised interpretation of the utter madness behind that first episode. The director adopts a breathless pace that rarely lets up at all during its real-time structure, with one behind-the-scenes mishap soon leading into several others all at once, whether it’s a tense confrontation with the likes of Milton Berle (a smarmy J.K. Simmons) or a fire nearly breaking out thanks to a lighting rig crashing onto the set. All these competing egos and disastrous scenarios make for stressful entertainment, as Reitman captures it all through a series of lengthy one-shot takes via some 16mm cinematography (provided by DP Eric Steelberg) that gives it the appropriate look and feel of a 70s exploitation movie.

Given that it’s centred around of the most famous shows in comedy history, it also makes a huge amount of sense that Saturday Night is, even amidst all the chaos, quite brilliantly hilarious. It is Reitman’s funniest movie to date, as he and Kenan squeeze in one well-written zinger after another that more often than not scores the kind of laughs you would expect to hear on an actual episode of Saturday Night Live, and the stacked ensemble cast deliver some pitch-perfect interpretations of these comedic icons, particularly a fantastic Cory Michael Smith who completely nails the quick-witted deadpan nature of Chevy Chase.

Some of the film’s biggest laugh-out-loud moments, however, come from the absolute manic stuff going on in the film’s numerous side-plots, like Michaels’ assistant (played by No Hard Feelings standout Andrew Barth Feldman) having a weed-infused panic attack, to the sole Black cast member Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) trying to ascertain what his role on the show is beyond the ones associated with negative stereotypes. It’s all so well weaved together, not to mention extremely funny, that it makes for some of the most stressed-out comedy you’ll likely see in a film all year.

Any misgivings I may have about the movie are few, but worth bringing up regardless for it may well determine your own enjoyment of this otherwise fantastic movie. There is a constant jazz score playing throughout the movie – provided by Jon Batiste, who also portrays the show’s musical guest Billy Preston in the movie – which can make it a bit hard to hear certain lines of dialogue, especially with so much else going on at once. It gets to a point where I would seriously recommend watching this movie with subtitles, because even if you are fortunate enough to hear the dialogue over the music, there is once again so much to absorb in one go that it’s likely that you may well miss a solid line or two.

That aside, as a chaotic, funny and surprisingly intense thrill ride, Saturday Night has the goods. It encapsulates the iconic status of what this show they’re putting on would eventually become, while acknowledging that it took nearly risking a heart attack to get it on the air in the first place. It’s absolutely worth checking out, whether you’re into SNL or not, and could well become a future classic of chaos comedy.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Saturday Night is a chaotic, hilarious, and surprisingly intense account of the first-ever Saturday Night Live, which director/co-writer Jason Reitman and his pitch-perfect ensemble cast effortlessly operate on at the height of their creative talents, crafting a thrill ride that’s every bit as entertaining and enthralling as your average SNL episode.

It’s too early for cinema showtimes, but stay tuned!