The Plot: Saturday 11th October 1975. NBC Studios is trying something a bit different tonight. The Saturday Night comedy and music show is about to go live for the very first time at 11:30pm. With just 90 minutes to go, creator and producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) is in the midst of trying to orchestrate backstage chaos into something resembling quality television for a late-night audience. George Carlin (Matthew Rhys) is proving difficult to engage with. John Belushi (Matt Wood) is erratic, objecting to his bee costume and won’t sign his contract. The crew are in open revolt and are fighting each other. NBC Head of Talent Tebet (Willem Dafoe) is watching from the wings, ready to shut them down and do a re-run of the Johnny Carson show instead. The show must go on though…
The Verdict: Where next for Jason Reitman after the crushing disappointment of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire? The answer wasn’t so obvious last year, given that he’s been entrusted with carrying the family ghost-busting business into the future. The answer is perhaps for him to just push all that legacy to one side, take a breather and focus his energies on doing what he does best: telling insightful stories that matter, while also making the kind of film that his late, great father Ivan would have been proud of. This is where we find Reitman as he rewinds the clock to 1975 and a landmark date in American television: Saturday Night (initially without the Live part) would prove to be a case of the revolution being televised. It swept away dusty talk show hosts and brought forth a new generation of American and Canadian luminary comedians: Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Andy Kaufman to name but a few.
Saturday Night recounts the build-up to the first live broadcast in near real-time. For producer Lorne Michaels, he didn’t quite know what the show itself was or even how long it would run that night. It developed organically through the talent involved, but wrestling all those egos to the ground and trying to mould that talent into shape proved to be something of a nightmare. Reitman’s film takes the viewpoint that Michaels was frantically laying down the tracks and building the train station while the train was on its way with the studio bigwigs smoking away in the lounge carriage. Despite that burden bearing down on him, Michaels remains an ocean of calm here – well-played by Gabriel LaBelle following his star-making turn in The Fabelmans. This is very much an ensemble piece though, with a rotating cast of future big names and in the case of Succession’s Nicholas Braun, he amusingly plays both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson for added value.
Working with such a large cast would certainly present a challenge to any director, but Reitman shows a real deftness of touch in the way he orchestrates each actor and their scenes to get the best out of them. This is how an ensemble film should work: no matter how small the part, each character that stumbles in from stage left or right registers in the audience’s mind. Case in point: J.K. Simmons as ‘Mr Television’ himself Milton Berle or Matthew Rhys as a typically prickly George Carlin. There’s a lot of humour to be mined here in how such mind-meltingly mad chaos resulted in something so memorable being created. This is just the way of things in showbiz: see also the backstage drama for Blade Runner or rather Blood Runner as it was dubbed by its crew. There isn’t a whole lot of introspection in this film or an obvious indication of legacy. It ends a little too abruptly just as it’s getting interesting, with Reitman signing off by essentially saying ‘the rest is history’. Maybe that’s fine for American audiences, but for those less familiar with the story it has the happy/sad effect of wanting more.
Saturday Night is a more comfortable fit for Reitman’s talents as a director, producer and co-writer with his longtime pal Gil Kenan. It’s often wildly entertaining, frequently funny and taps into the nervy unpredictability of live television without compromising on what the Saturday Night team in front of and behind the cameras actually achieved that night. It doesn’t always work, but when it frequently hits the punchline with a decent success rate then it warrants a tuning-in to see how comedic genius was born out of comedic chaos.
Rating: 3.5 / 5
Review by Gareth O’Connor



In short: Hits the punchline
Directed by Jason Reitman.
Starring Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Matt Wood, Dylan O'Brien, Nicholas Braun, Matthew Rhys, Willem Dafoe.