Review: Saturday Night
Official synopsis: At 11:30pm on October 11th, 1975, a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers lead by Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) changed television forever. Find out what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live.
SNL has been on longer than I've been alive. I don't know a world without it, and it's something I've always watched. (Yes, SNL is still funny. It's always been funny, but everyone has their off days/shows) So watching a film by Jason Reitman, I director I generally enjoy was a given.
Reitman must be living in his Aaron Sorkin era because I felt him all over the script. The dialogue is fast paced, there's a lot of quick cuts. It reminded me a lot of The Newsroom in places. That snappy feel is what I enjoyed most about Saturday Night. Everything is two seconds away from falling apart, but they keep plugging away.
The cast is varied. You have actors like Dylan O'Brien and Cory Michael Smith tasked with playing giants Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase, they do great impressions. My favorite performance goes to Emmy Winner Lamorne Morris who plays Garrett Morris. He was excellent. Ella Hunt and Emily Fairn playing Gilda Radner and Laraine Newman were lovely And of course there's Cooper Hoffman, who reminds me so much of his dad that it's almost sad. .
On the other side, there were performances I just didn't vibe with. Gabriel LaBelle, despite once again getting the opportunity to play a famous vessel is just...there. Again. He plays Lorne the same way he played fictional Steven Spielberg in The Fabelmans and I just wasn't blown away. Nicholas Braun plays two different roles - Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson, and I found that most distracting if anything. I know he originally wasn't supposed to play Kaufman, but I don't think putting him in a dual role was the best move. They could've found someone else.
Still, as messy as this was at times, it was a good watch and never had time to be boring. And like the real SNL, it was never short on laughs.
Grade: B
I remember watching the very first episodes and laughing so much. They did a spoof about mommy Dearest where, Gilda Radner played Joan Crawford’s daughter which is hilarious. I believe Jane Curtain was Joan and Dan Ackroyd played Clark Gable who was going to give her a toy but ended up giving her raw Chuck. I laughed sooo much. I watched it when Billy Crystal and Eddie Murphy were on but, then, I fell off. I actually don’t watch it now. I did see some episodes with Phil Hartman( so sad).
ReplyDeleteBut that’s about it.
There's a free Roku channel that plays SNL sketches all day, and recently I caught the opening sketch where the guy is learning English that they depict in this film. I found that pretty funny.
DeleteYeah, definitely boring at times, though I appreciated the frenetic pacing
ReplyDeleteSame. We love fast pace lol
DeleteI'm going to wait for this on streaming as I am interested in the subject as I grew up on SNL as the early 90s line-up of the bad boys such as Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Chris Rock, and David Spade (not counting Rob Schneider because he's a piece of shit) as those were the guys that made me laugh along with Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon, Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Jan Hooks, and everyone else at that time. That was my favorite period of SNL (despite having one of the worst episodes EVER with that no-talent ass-clown Michael Bolton as the musical guest and the host in... BLECH! Steven Seagal).
ReplyDeleteRob Schneider does completely suck! It's hard for me to pick a favorite era of SNL because I loved the late 90's/early 2000's ones too, but this past decade or so after Kristen Wiig and Fred Armisen left has been amazing.
DeleteI put up a comment the other day, but clearly on my end it didn't go through--I didn't want to double post, so I waited. I felt like there was something funky on my end.
ReplyDeleteI kind of want to see this, but I'm a little worried about it. I'm old enough to remember when SNL was new, but not old enough to have been allowed to stay up to watch it. A couple of years ago, my wife and I wanted to watch some of the first seasons steaming (Peacock, maybe?), and it was...it was almost unwatchable and tragically unfunny.
Comedy doesn't often translate generations or eras, and early SNL doesn't. Sadly true of a lot of SCTV as well.
I get that, I leave the SNL Roku channel on quite a bit in my house while I'm doing other things, and some of those sketches are tragic. I think the comedy translates pretty well here though.
Delete