Review: It’s ‘Saturday Night,’ not as edgy as it really was, celebrated in a nostalgic haze

Everything changed for comedy, television and a gaggle of unknown cut-ups at Studio 8H in New York’s Rockefeller Center on the night of Oct. 11, 1975. Fifty years later, “Saturday Night Live” has become cultural bedrock (if not quite countercultural anymore). But in Jason Reitman’s overstuffed, adrenalized “Saturday Night,” a dramatization of the windup to that fateful first broadcast, you don’t feel the buzzy air of revolution so much as hear the voice of present-day legacy curation getting in the way.
There’s a naturally compelling story to be told: An untested but confident producer (Gabriel LaBelle stars as the young Lorne Michaels) feeling the pressure of a first show built on irreverence, at odds with a stodgy network accustomed to Johnny Carson’s after-hours royalty. There are also a fair amount of drugs and clashing egos. While Michaels contends with artistic compromises suggested by co-creator Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), he also parries with an ominous executive threatening cancellation (Willem Dafoe). Meanwhile, the set is catching fire, his poison-witted head writer Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey) is fighting with the censor, and his wife and partner Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott) is fine-tuning sketches.
It’s a palpable air of pre-game, will-it-work-or-not insanity, even if there’s an overreliance on the percussive score of Jon Batiste (also playing guest performer Billy Preston) to juice the ticking-clock scenario, and a regrettably Sorkin-esque glibness to the whiplash-timed exchanges. But most naggingly, as fashioned by Reitman and screenwriter Gil Kenan, this tribute is all too prescient about its countdown to history: Much of the dialogue is of the “You’re going down as one of the greats” variety. That leaves this frenzied backstage glimpse not nearly as absorbing, as if everyone were a hypertext link to their future Wiki page instead of talented people in a tense moment, ready to gamble on something new.
The shame of that approach is that there’s plenty to offer in the physical nuts and bolts of “Saturday Night,” from the texture of the ’70s in Eric Steelberg’s 16mm cinematography to the mostly solid, if unwieldy, cast. As for the movie’s Not Ready for Prime Time (Re)players, they admirably eschew imitation for essence — not that essence alone carries us past thumbnail portraiture into something more dimensionalized for Matt Wood, Dylan O’Brien or Cory Michael Smith as, respectively, brooding John Belushi, eccentric Dan Aykroyd and smarmy Chevy Chase. The relentless pace keeps them and the women — Emily Fairn’s Laraine Newman, Ella Hunt’s Gilda Radner and Kim Matula’s Jane Curtin — at arm’s length. Only Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris (no relation), musing aloud about how disconnected he feels as a Juilliard-trained Black artist given no prominence in a sea of white, achieves a satisfying completeness: the outsider within the outsiders.
But mostly, one is left with the sense that “Saturday Night” would rather cram everybody into its class photograph (including before-they-were-famous Al Franken and Billy Crystal) when a handful of fleshed-out characterizations might have had more resonance. Sure, it’s fun to watch J.K. Simmons’ deliciously arrogant Milton Berle undermining Chase’s overplayed cock-of-the-walk confidence. But elsewhere, it seems the only reason to include Jim Henson (a miscast Nicholas Braun) was to bully a beloved genius’ ill-met career move with his Muppets. Cheap targets belong to the wilderness-years “Saturday Night Live,” not its heyday.
A twice-cast Braun hovers throughout as legendary oddball Andy Kaufman, whose lip-synching Mighty Mouse bit exemplified the freak flag Michaels was willing to fly to give his chaotic creation life. It’s strange, then, to see it used for heartwarming purposes in “Saturday Night,” performed for a readily laughing cast and crew as if obviously destined for greatness. (Wouldn’t someone have shrugged? Or said, “Huh?”) The truth is nothing was certain about that first show, save it giving everyone room to actually achieve greatness episodes later. Too bad that more measured view of talent wasn’t as interesting to the makers of the affectionate yet hollow homage that is “Saturday Night.”