Imagine your life’s work, your greatest creation, was about to premier in front of hundreds of thousands of people. Imagine that with your career on the line you are the producer of a show whose network is preying on your downfall. Imagine everybody is looking at you to explain something unexplainable. This is exactly what executive producer and creator of Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels, felt on the opening night of SNL.
On Sept. 27 a movie detailing the hour and a half before the very first showing of SNL came out called Saturday Night. It shows us how the cast was pumped, the producers were terrified, the studio executives were menacing.
The movie is a little bit over an hour and a half, due to the credits. The actual time that they tell you in the movie does make sense with how much time has passed in both the movie and in real life. Though the movie is not 100% accurate, most events happened at some point in SNL history, just not necessarily on the opening night.
The movie is full of fast paced sequences and hilarious skits that really capture that SNL feel that we all know and love. Many of the jokes hit, even for someone who was not alive and did not watch the first SNL broadcast. Though there are some jokes that you miss if you aren’t familiar with old SNL (according to my dad).
The real standouts of the movie are the actors. Given that they are playing real life people, it can be hard to live up to the real thing, but they all hit their marks spectacularly. Gabriel LaBelle plays Lorne Michaels and has some incredible subtle acting, he does a wonderful job playing a character who is pretending to be perfectly fine and prepared but is actually freaking out beneath the surface.
All of the actors playing cast members and crew also do an incredible job. Though they don’t have as many scenes, they still manage to stand out. Ella Hunt (Gilda Radner), Cory Michael Smith (Chevy Chase), Lamorne Morris (Garret Morris), and Dylan O’Brian (Dan Aykroyd) each get their time to shine while playing the cast members. They do an awesome job recreating the old SNL skits and portraying young actors who are so stoked to be a part of a real show. Rachel Sennot (Rosie Shuster), Cooper Hoffman (Dick Ebersol), Andrew Barth Feldman (Neil Levy), and Willem Dafoe (David Tebet) all also have their moments portraying crew members or studio executives and really add to the overall chaos of the movie.
Although the movie is based on something that only the older generations will have experienced, it does a wonderful job of being hilarious for anyone who wants to watch and enjoys comedy. It is truly a good movie, and given that it is only an hour and a half, it is 100% worth the watch.
