‘Saturday Night’ Review: A Frantically Hysterical ‘SNL’ Origin Story

Saturday Night Live (SNL) has been in the pop culture conversation for nearly 50 years now, with the show set to celebrate its massive milestone with its upcoming season. So what better time to create a movie about its origin? Jason Reitman‘s newest film Saturday Night does just that; taking place in the hours just before the first episode ever aired, the star-studded cast of young guns and unknowns replicate exactly what one of the greatest and most formative nights in entertainment history entailed to great detail and hilarity.

Jason Reitman’s ‘Saturday Night’ Is Madness Manifested

October 11, 1975: the night that changed television, comedy, and the world forever. A group of 20-something unknown comedians is corraled by producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) with the task of filling the Saturday night television slot. Unwavering and unbending in his revolutionary ideas, Lorne births the future of not only television but of a generation by introducing Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman reinvigorating his Licorice Pizza character traits) — the Director of Weekend Late Night Programming at NBC at the time — to a show filled with musical performances, comedic sketches, and political satire. Naturally, such an idea is crumbling right before Lorne’s eyes just 90 minutes before the first show.

Instantaneously hectic in its energy, sporadic in its character interactions, and infectious with a drum and piano-heavy score crafted by Jon Batiste (who also portrays the iconic Billy Preston in the film), Saturday Night is everything you want out of the cocaine-laced creative process behind arguably the most important television show ever crafted. Reitman opens the film with a lengthy “oner” that quickly introduces epochal characters like Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien), Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), and John Belushi (Matt Wood). Expedient in its overtaking energy, the movie doesn’t lose a beat for its entire 109-minute runtime, a feat that is crucial in making a movie like this work with such success.

‘Saturday Night’ Is Driven by Heart and Comedy

Running through hallways, stages, and fitting rooms with Lorne, it’s easy to see the juxtaposing manic attraction that Reitman is able to create with his vision of SNL on that fateful night. It’s “a place to call home” one cast member exhales after a breathless run of sequences that cultivate the heartful nature of what this project, and art, means to the cast of the show.

Saturday Night refuses to succumb to the frenzied status it feeds off of, delivering gentle and honest moments of reflection and thematic resonance when it fits. Lorne’s wife and writing partner Rosier Shuster (Rachel Sennott) provides a surprisingly grounded aspect that keeps the movie from getting away from itself and self-indulging in its own importance more than it already does. Sennott, along with O’Brien, both bring a significant sexiness that exudes a certain thrill amongst the panic.

It’s not lost on the film what role weed and cocaine played in sculpting the moments, and people, that were pillars of SNL. Going so far as to vaguely speak about the future of many of its stars through a couple of small character conversations, Saturday Night broaches the heart-wrenching topic with gentle hands. Gil Kenan, a frequent scribe collaborator with Reitman, elicits the strength of every single cast member through maniacal, overlapping dialogue and tonal specificity to each actor. By the time the credits rolled, I found myself wishing to see what Lorne, Belushi, Aykroyd, and even a massively secondary character like Neil Levy — Lorne’s errand boy played with uproarious energy by Andrew Barth Feldman — were doing; more importantly what they were feeling.

Jason Reitman’s Late-Night Flick Is One of the Year’s Best

Set against the expectations of studio execs (J.K. Simmons possesses one of the funniest and most daring moments of the entire movie), it’s no surprise where Saturday Night winds up. Even with its common success story tropes and superabundance of character storylines that don’t always scrape past surface level, the movie is full of unshakable soulfulness and ungodly funny moments. A sensational collection of young actors set against a monumental moment in history mix to make one of the best movies of 2024.

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