Arts & Culture

Saturday Night
Where: In theatres
What: Movie, 109 mins.
When: Fri., Oct. 4
Genre: Drama
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should watch: Frantic, frenetic look in what feels like real time at the creation and airing of the first-ever episode of TV’s Saturday Night Live.

CANADIAN DIRECTOR  Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Juno) expertly captures the chaotic energy and excitement that powered TV’s Saturday Night Live the night of its television debut, Oct. 11, 1975, and throughout its early years when it inventively and dangerously pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable — and funny — on TV. Back when Saturday Night Live still felt radical.

Fellow Canadian, SNL creator and visionary Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) is at the centre of the story — as he should be — with the rest of the now legendary cast popping up like flotsam in a tidal wave as no one member of the Not Ready For Primetime Players dominates the story. There were no stars yet, just a bunch of eager and edgy (mostly) comedians who collectively had little idea how they would make 90 minutes of live TV happen, let alone be funny.

It’s a changing of the guard story as network execs, censors and old-time stars like Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons) are all rooting against or are at least skeptical of the new show and its producer.

Tension between Michaels and his wife, Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), who was a key contributor to the show, is a subplot that Michaels barely has time to address in the chaos of bringing the show to air. Reitman achieves a credible level of tension and anxiety, the mayhem never feeling contrived as we are consumed, like Michaels, with the show getting to air.

John Belushi (Matt Wood) is appropriately demonic and inspired while Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) is credibly douchy and entitled. Succession’s Nicholas Braun masterfully plays two roles, the truly pioneering and twisted “comic” Andy Kaufman as well as the trippy hippie Jim Henson, whose Muppets had no business being part of the show. (The puppets, who were hated and who befuddled the show’s writers, were dropped after a few episodes.)

Classically-trained Black actor Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) spends much of the film trying to figure out what his role is, an issue SNL’s white writers never really figured out. Female cast members all vie for their spots, knowing from the start they will have to fight their way in for influence and screen time.

Though he wasn’t even born when the show first aired, Reitman expertly captures SNL’s initial revolutionary, out-of-control energy that once made it an important part of television, offering a deep contrast with the “family-friendly” fluff that dominated the airwaves.