Saturday Night – Review

It is October 11, 1975. Television history is about to be made, for better or worse. At 11:30, the first episode of a new variety comedy spectacular, Saturday Night Live, is set to air with a group of young comedians and produced by a man named Lorne Michaels (LaBelle).

As NBC Studios preps the preshow, we enter the picture. There is about 90 minutes until air. As Chevy Chase (Smith), Gilda Radnor (Hunt), Dan Akroyd (O’Brien), Laraine Newman (Fairn), Jim Belushi (Wood), Garrett Morris (Morris), Jane Curtin (Matula), Andy Kaufman (Braun), Jim Henson (also Braun), Billy Crystal (Podany), Valri Bromfield (Britti), Al Franken (Gray), Michael O’Donoghue (Dewey) and more prepare themselves for live TV craziness, the pressure is on.

Saturday Night moves at pretty much real time. Script issues, production questions, set ordering, contract strife, NBC page conflict, actor drama, makeup and costume fittings, censorship appeasement, fluffy llamas, sage burning to remove demons, studio exec interference, show timing, and about anything else you can imagine rears its ugly head in the minutes leading up to showtime.

The film is a fun look at set and production chaos which is made exponentially more stressful by it showcasing both live TV and a first episode of a new kind of comedy sketch actor showcase. It dives into all show making aspects; however, is mostly surface level as it can only go so deep in a sub two-hour film. Mostly its focus is tension and cohesive magic to make the show work and a bit of the executive side.

The score enhances the tension, the direction is tight and the large ensemble cast recreates their real-life counterparts fairly successfully all around. While you may want a deeper look at some of the characters or the evening itself, it does a pretty good job digging into the wild times on set during a live audience nationally televised comedy show. Saturday Night plays things a bit safe overall but the runtime zips by and it is quite entertaining.