Saturday Night

I'm a pretty casual watcher of Saturday Night Live. There are historical bits that are still hilarious, it has created a lot of great stars, and even some of today's sketches earn good laughs, though it's rare to see entire episodes landing their mark. 

The idea of a Saturday Night "history" film seems like a no-brainer, and I'm a bit surprised it took this long to make. Early trailers were fun, especially seeing some modern stars take on iconic roles, and at one point I was curious if this would be a gem. 

Directed and co-written by Jason Reitman - who I find to be on the more "meh" side overall - Saturday Night is a fun film, although a one-time view for me - that I wish had really leaned in to either one of the directions it establishes as opposed to straddling, and kind of half-assing both. 

Set up as a ticking-clock "thriller", Saturday Night tells the story of the 90 minutes before they went to air and changed TV history forever. Given how much compounding "one more thing going wrong" there is, I have to imagine that a good bit of it is fictionalized (or perhaps exaggerated that it happened 90 minutes before), but either way, this is still an interesting film to see this history. The entire movie follows Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), with many single-take tracking shots, as he navigates the chaos and keeps his composure, trying to see his vision come to fruition. I think this lens was the correct one, complimented by a jazzy (think SNL intro music) original score, but for some reason, it never felt all that tense to me. There's excitement with the clock continuously checking in and the stakes are revealed to be high...but yet I didn't feel as invested or gripped as I should have been. I can't quite put a finger on it - potentially the jazzy music wasn't helping? - but as a thriller, Saturday Night is mildly engaging, but never riveting. 

As a comedy, I was disappointed. Perhaps mistakenly, I was hoping for something hilarious, but I'd say I only got 3-4 really good laughs throughout the whole thing. Other bits are amusing, but I don't think the final product is nearly as funny as it thinks it is. There's considerable attempts at humor, and while I can't think of any that outright failed, there were a fair amount where I could tell my audience (and my own) reaction was a smile rather than a laugh. This is strange to me given the talent involved (e.g. Rachel Sennott...anyone remember Bottoms from last year?) and probably why I'm not passionate either way with Saturday Night. As a thriller, it's not intense enough, but I would have traded that for a gut-busting comedy. However, it's not doing a whole lot special there either so the result is this interesting, but tame thriller and a merely amusing comedy. 

Luckily, the film is elevated by its young star power. LaBelle is highly watchable as Michaels, and you immediately find yourself rooting for him. Cory Michael Smith is a mindblowing recreation of Chevy Chase (it's actually wild), Dylan O'Brien is having fun as Dan Aykroyd, while others (Rachel Sennott, Lamorne Morris, Matt Wood, Nicholas Braun, and a few A-list stars I won't ruin) are memorable in their roles too. 

This is one of those reviews where I feel like I'm being too harsh on Saturday Night. I did enjoy my first viewing of it. It was a story I had no idea about, was generally entertaining, on the short-ish side, and gave me a few laughs. Though its decision to ride the middle of whether it wanted to be a true, high-stakes ticking-clock thriller or outrageous comedy, leaves it somewhere in the more boring middle. 

Rapid Rath's Review Score | 6.5/10