Review of Saturday Night: The chaotic beginnings of a legendary TV show

When things that are a natural part of our everyday lives gradually become historical, it is a sure sign that people have grown old. For several generations of Americans, this is certainly the case with the weekly sketch comedy “Saturday Night Live”, which started its 50th season in September 2024. With this anniversary in mind, Jason Reitman (known as the director of “Juno” or “Up In The Air”) devoted himself to the premiere night of the show – and with it the chaos that reigned on October 11, 1975 in the so-called “30 Rock”, Studio 8H of the NBC headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. Beyond that, however, Reitman has little to tell us about the significance of the cultural phenomenon “SNL”…

The show doesn't go live when it's finished, but when it's 11:30 p.m., says a proclamatory sign at the beginning, which proclaims the quasi-motto for the next 90 minutes. Starting at 10 p.m., these 90 minutes before the broadcast of the very first “Saturday Night Live” episode run more or less in real time – the creatives behind the camera repeatedly remind us of the time they (and us) still have until the broadcast begins. That's an absolutely refreshing time. Reitman tried to counter the sketch structure of the cult show in “Saturday night” long sequences that capture the constant hustle and bustle behind the scenes of the live broadcast, which at times even brings to mind Gaspar Noé's “Lux Æterna”.

Although the story revolves primarily around Lone Michaels, the creator and long-time showrunner of “SNL,” the camera keeps drifting away from him when something moves on the sidelines, when someone screams, something breaks or even catches fire. In keeping with the ensemble character of the actual show, small individual episodes, secondary construction sites and sources of fire keep cropping up in the midst of the on-set chaos, which continue or worsen over the course of the runtime.

Michaels is played by Gabriel LaBelle, who – after already playing a Hollywood figurehead in “The Fables” with the alter ego of the young Steven Spielberg – is now taking on the next big name in show business. If the contrast between West Coast glamour and East Coast sobriety could hardly be greater, all kinds of stars have matured under Michael's patronage, whose appearances on the show have opened up great careers in television for a long time – including Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Will Farrell and Tina Fey. Not to mention films like “Blues Brothers” and “Wayne's World”, which also come from the “Saturday Night Live” cosmos.

Cooper Hoffman is the heart of the film

The person who brought the project to Michaels was Dick Ebersol, the vice president of NBC's nighttime programming, played by Cooper Hoffman (of Paul Thomas Anderson's “Licorice Pizza”). It's hardly an exaggeration to say that he is the heart of this film. Because as exciting as Reitman's long takes may feel at first, it doesn't take long before the choreography behind them – and with it the calculation – becomes all too clear. However, as soon as the camera turns back to Hoffman's face, whose Ebersol is constantly busy putting things in order in one way or another, the hectic pace and stress suddenly become tangible – whereas Reitman otherwise tries to find a cinematic form for the constant chaos.

This is supported by the time, which is displayed roughly every ten minutes with a mercilessly advancing clock face, repeatedly causing laughter. However, it is not without a certain irony that a film about a comedy show rarely succeeds in making the audience laugh. Willem Dafoe (“Spider-Man”, “Poor Things”) is probably to be understood as the walking joke, playing a caricatural, villainous version of David Tebet, who was in charge of NBC's senior management for decades. Dafoe clearly does what he can. But if good punchlines can be teased out of the figure of a high-ranking manager who always has to be appeased with flimsy excuses, then Reitman and screenwriter Gil Kenan were clearly not up to the task.

Not funny and without any apparent motivation

Even if you ignore the lack of or uninspiring jokes for a moment – it's not without reason that comedians are often considered depressed – it's pretty hard to find an urgent reason for this film's existence beyond the 50th anniversary. Sure, the limited and stereotypical roles that people of color were mainly given at that time are mentioned in passing: For example, the actor Garrett Morris (played by his namesake Lamorne Morris, who is not related to him) once says that as a black person you are always offered the same characters – the butler, the shoeshine boy or the pimp. But neither this aspect nor any other seems to be really important to Reitman. Nothing catches on.

Perhaps this problem can also be described by the now rare 16mm format that Reitman and his long-time cinematographer Eric Steelberg worked with here – which they announced with some pride at the Toronto Film Festival. This format is actually known for its grainy structure, but in “Saturday Night” it seems strangely smoothed out, almost as if the aim was to hide the analogue filming from the audience as much as possible. Just as it is difficult to find a thematic motivation for the film, the images are also difficult to grasp. What remains in the end is a film that – apart from a multitude of references that only “SNL” fans will understand – is content to recreate the particularly chaotic premiere night of a new live show.

Conclusion: Despite a star-studded cast, Jason Reitman's “Saturday Night” fails to capture the spirit and cultural significance of the cult phenomenon “SNL.” Unskilled as a comedy and thematically lacking in focus, the film is little more than an uninspired reenactment of a premiere taping, the significance of which is explained less by Reitman's cinematic vision than by its context.