‘Saturday Night’ Review: Jason Reitman’s Ticking Clock Never Strikes
'Saturday Night' (2024)
There is power in the walk-and-talk. When a character moves through the scene, passing by people too busy to stop, while someone runs up and asks them questions about something trivial or monumental, the audience gets to see a character’s strengths, weaknesses, ego, and overall place in the story.
This is the power that should have made Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night—an exaggerated look at the 90 minutes leading up to the first episode of Saturday Night Live—an exciting glimpse into the legacy crafted by late-night legend Lorne Michaels.
But walk-and-talks can only do so much for the wired character, played by Gabriel LaBelle. We meet him outside as a ticket boy (Finn Wolfhard) struggles to get people to attend a free show. Lorne is taking a break from whatever is happening inside but is called back after a flaming script lands on the sidewalk. Instantly, Lorne is bombarded with questions, problems, and visions of comedy’s revolution the moment he re-enters 30 Rock, the headquarters of the greatest television network to come out of America.
While the opening night of SNL has been heavily reported on—most brilliantly in James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales’s Live From New York—Reitman’s 109-minute film, which unfolds almost in real-time, feels like a SparkNotes version with added flair to create tension in an environment that we, nearly 50 years in the future, know works out. It seems Reitman and his co-writer Gil Kenan were too eager to include everything, giving each original cast member and important behind-the-scenes figure a moment to shine in a modern light rather than focusing on what made the story compelling to them. All of this is to say that there’s too much going on in the film with very little substance to actually care about.
Saturday Night rarely pulls focus away from Lorne as he weaves through the set of the shows he’s created, solving last-minute problems—like not having a script locked, needing to cut out an hour and a half of the show, finding a new lighting director, finishing bricking the stage, and getting John Belushi (Matt Wood) to sign his contract and make it onstage despite his Brando-sized ego (Belushi is too good to be a bee). These are aspects of the business that seem too important to be left to the last 90 minutes before showtime. But entertainment is a funny business. While life-altering problems can often feel small, small problems can feel life-altering. To Lorne, everything about this night is life-altering—life or death. Reitman does a good job of making it feel high-stakes for a stand-out 45 minutes through gags that kill the face pace of Lorne’s walk-and-talks or the chaos that continues to exist just outside of the quiet rooms where everything feels relatively safe.
The rest of the movie feels bogged down by its bloated weight. That’s not to say backstage movies—films that show you the making of something—can’t work. Some of the best backstage movies, like All That Jazz, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, and Tropic Thunder, balance multiple storylines with a golden thread that keeps the audience tethered to something they can root for.
What Saturday Night struggles with is making us care about the events unfolding on screen. We already know the fate of many players—whether they make it into the 90-minute show or get axed by Lorne at the last minute. It’s hard to feel bad when Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) gets cut, knowing he goes on to become one of the biggest stars in America. Instead, the montage of characters often makes the film feel like a fun montage rather than a film we should care about from start to finish.
The film’s most engaging moments are often the quiet ones—Lorne’s reflective nature in a crowded room, Rosie’s (Rachel Sennott) ability to soothe worried souls, longing glances, hurt faces, and those deciding moments between “yes” or “no.” These small moments, set against the chaos of an ensemble cast running around like organized chickens with their heads cut off, pull the audience back in when the narrative framing device becomes overwhelming. Unfortunately, the overall story reads like juvenile excitement over a historic subject that was crammed, folded, and manipulated to fit into a 109-minute box—when a book could offer more insight and accuracy than the film ever does.
'Saturday Night' (2024)
This movie isn’t made for the Saturday Night Live super fan. It’s made for someone who is broadly familiar with the show and wouldn’t mind watching a film about the chaotic night before the first skit. However, that same person could just read the Wikipedia page. It’s hard to make this film feel necessary. Reitman’s poor pacing and lack of confidence at the typewriter, behind the camera, or in the editing bay cause the movie to stumble and slump. While it is technically fine, there’s little to write home about.
Watch this movie on a Saturday night if you don’t want to watch Saturday Night Live or are craving a bit of nostalgia for the heyday of great comedians. Other than that, I fear Saturday Night will fade into oblivion after awards season, leaving many to wonder why Reitman spent so long on a movie that fails to define his career in any way.
Grade: B-
