erik lundegaard

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Monday December 16, 2024

Movie Review: Saturday Night (2024)

WARNING: SPOILERS

It begins like Aaron Sorkin on steroids and never stops. That’s not a compliment. It’s walk-and-talk mixed with mid-1970s comedic anarchy that tries too hard. Everyone’s got bits. Some are bits that wouldn’t be used on the show for years. Maybe that’s what backstage life is like? Was like? For these Second City alums about to make television history? I just didn’t buy it. It's like they took an “SNL” oral history and pretended it all happened in the 90 minutes leading up to the first show.

Like “High Noon,” it’s filmed in real time, but it’s about the 90 minutes before the first airing of “Saturday Night Live,” then called “Saturday Night,” and nothing is going right for poor Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle, who played young Steven Spielberg in “The Fabelmans”). His unknown cast is already full of divas, the network is breathing down his neck and threatening to put on a Johnny Carson rerun, the fussy fat lady censor is being taunted by head writer Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey), and Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman) is trying to turn the show into product placement for Polaroid.

Some of the problems feel like they should just cancel each other out. We have too many sketches/performances? And nothing is written for Jim Henson’s Muppets? And John Belushi (Matt Wood) hasn’t signed his contract yet? OK, no Henson and Belushi this week. Now we fit.

Here he comes to save the day
The movie opens with Michaels walking into 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where, out front, busking, an NBC page (Finn Wolfhard of “Stranger Things”) is trying to entice passersby to be part of that first audience. And he’s bad at it. A cast of unknowns doing sketches? Nobody cares. He has nothing to pitch. Except he has something to pitch. “Hey, want to see George Carlin for free?” Carlin was the first host, and the only name, and he’d draw the exact crowd you’d want. Nobody says it. Because it has to be a problem that is magically resolved at the 11th hour. Hey, turns out people DO want to see the show! Great kid, I don’t believe you existed.

Belushi is a diva who thinks he’s Marlon Brando? You’d think he’d wait until Season 2 or 3. Franken and Davis (Taylor Gray and Mcabe Gregg) are pitching and testing the Julia Child sketch from Season 4 an hour before the debut of the first show? And fake blood gets splattered over Lorne’s shirt? And he goes to a nearby bar where a put-upon schlub is toiling away for a dickish Borscht Belt comedian (Brad Garrett), so Lorne immediately hires the schlub, who turns out to be—WHAT?!?—comedy legend Alan Zweibel (Josh Brener)??? And so when Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) is chosen last-minute for the “Weekend Update” slot and the cue cards are scattered, and the network execs, particularly Dave Tebet (Willem Dafoe), are ready to pull the plug, in comes Zweibel with the joke about the U.S. stamp commemorating prostitution—it’s 10 cents but if you lick it it’s a quarter. And that saves the day. That and Andy Kaufman (Nicholas Braun of “Succession,” who also played Jim Henson) doing the Mighty Mouse bit about saving the day.

Meanwhile, Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris, shockingly unrelated), a singer and playwright, wonders why he’s there. Meanwhile, the women are practicing the hardhat sketch with Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien) that they’ll do two months later when Lily Tomlin hosts. Otherwise they’re given nothing to do. In the movie. Jane Curtain (Kim Matula) is pretty, Gilda Radner is adorable, kinda (Ella Hunt doesn’t nail Gilda), and Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn) is, you know, there. The most important female character in the movie isn't any of them but writer Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), who is married to Michaels, whose big conflict is which surname to use in the credits. Tenterhooks.

Smith as Chevy Chase is great. On first glance he sounds right, looks right, but he’s not as handsome—he’s too pasty or something, and it seems weird. But then I got used to it. Chevy’s drama is keeping tabs on his pretty fiancée (Kaia Gerber, Cindy Crawford’s daughter), and wondering whether he’s going to be the next Carson, and—again—that should be after the success, not before the first show. Did Chevy and Belushi hate each other immediately or only after Chevy became the breakout star? I’m assuming latter, movie shows former.

Belushi comes off poorly here. As does Ebersol and his Polaroid, Johnny Carson (who phones Lorne to shoot him down), and George Carlin (Matthew Rhys), who backs out of a toga sketch and calls the show shit. J.K. Simmons does a great job as Milton Berle, showing up backstage and being clueless as to what year it is. Mr. Television thinks he still matters in 1975. Apparently Berle was this kind of clueless asshole when he hosted SNL, but that was in 1979. Did we need him here? 

For a time, it feels like the movie will show us the secret of Lorne Michaels. Why did he work? Why did he last? And for a time the answer seems to be: low blood pressure. He stays calm when everyone around him isn’t. But he also seems clueless. Or unable to make a decision. The one decision we see him make, with authority, is kicking Billy Crystal off the show.

Anyway, at the last minute, the network doesn't pull the plug. The show goes on. And on and on.

Old Adult
For a while, director Jason Reitman couldn’t miss. He went  back-to-back-to-back-to-back: “Thank You for Smoking” (2005), “Juno” (2007), “Up in the Air (2009), “Young Adult” (2011). That's a helluva run. I thought they were all great but I particularly loved “Young Adult,” thought it hopelessly underrated, one of the best movies that year. Yet this is the first Reitman movie I’ve seen since then? Man, where have I been? Where has he been? We should have talked, we should always have talked.

I wanted to like this movie. Next time, just give me the documentary based on the oral history. Don’t pretend it all happened in the 90 minutes before the first 90 minutes.

Posted at 07:10 AM on Monday December 16, 2024 in category Movie Reviews - 2024