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Saturday Night Movie Review

Saturday Night is a 2024 biographical drama film directed by Jason Reitman and starring Gabriel LaBelle among many others. It’s such a mediocre movie.

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“Sorry. Tripped over my penis“

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Tensions run high as producer Lorne Michaels and a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers prepare for the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live in 1975. Rarely have I seen a film with a more limited appeal than this one. I personally like watching clips from older SNL shows, particularly in the nineties and aughts when it was at its peak. Today’s show is devoid of good humor and I am personally not acquainted with the seventies era at all.

Most people aren’t and that’s the truth. This is the kind of movie that can appeal only to older Americans who watched SNL back in that period and who are very much in the know about its lore and history and I would counter that those people are few in numbers. Also, for a film that was supposed to be about this crucial first show and how important it was for culture, the movie itself anything but crucial. It’s so slight in plot, so terribly paced and structured, and oh so boring throughout that I found it to be an utter waste of time.

The critics praised this cast for being huge and great, but it’s only the former of the two. If this is the star-studded cast of today’s movies, then it’s no wonder that there are no movie stars left today. Most of them gave very good performances, but none of them impressed me at all. Gabriel LaBelle is solid in the main role, but we never learn anything about Lorne Michaels and why this show was so important to him. There are some somewhat memorable moments to be found with Chevy, Aykroyd and of course Carlin, but those are very sparse. Most of these actors and the people that they play got a very small amount of screen time, amounting to no character development or purpose at the end.

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Saturday Night is proof that Jason Reitman has lost his way. He hasn’t made a really impactful movie in quite a while now and this is one of his weakest efforts so far. The cinematography did not appeal to me at all as the camera was cutting and moving all the time, making for a whiplash feel that was not needed. It tried to emulate ‘Birdman’ way too much. The score is also uninspired. The film is just about the making of the show with no show to speak of, but it lacks the excitement, the humor and the commentary about this era’s television that would have made it more interesting to watch. It’s too inside baseball.