It’s Oct. 11, 1975, just minutes before the first episode of “Saturday Night Live” (then called “NBC’s Saturday Night”). John Belushi (Matt Wood) is missing, but Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) has found him. She watches as he glides around the Rockefeller Center ice skating rink wearing a bumblebee costume.
This is one of the sweeter scenes in Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night,” which chronicles the 90 minutes before the premiere of the counterculture comedy show that would become the juggernaut “Saturday Night Live.” Radner looks serene and happy as she watches Belushi skate around the rink, waxing poetic about what she’ll remember when she’s grown old and this is all over. It won’t be the sketches or the chaos, but rather moments like this one.
Then, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), the creator of “Saturday Night Live,” enters the scene. He makes his way down to Belushi to try and convince him to come back up upstairs and do the show, a thread that runs throughout the film. It’s at this moment that Michaels speaks about the statue of Prometheus in front of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, recounting the story of how he brought not only fire and civilization, but also art, to humankind.
“Saturday Night” depends greatly on this type of mythologizing. A weighty sense of importance will almost always curb the scenes that give the film the most life – for example, Radner contemplating a far off future she would never see (she and Belushi both passed away in the 1980s), interrupted by a scene that overtly compares Lorne Michaels to Prometheus. It’s eye-roll inducing, but the kind of thing that could be tolerated if the film lived up to the hype. There are some good performances sprinkled throughout “Saturday Night,” but for the most part the filmmaking and the script – co-written by Reitman and frequent collaborator Gil Kenan – fall flat.
From the moment “Saturday Night” starts, Reitman tries to create a sense of anarchy, a sense that none of this should have worked, that everything is falling apart and no one really knows what they’re doing here. The camera is on a permanent swivel as it follows Michaels through a barrage of insecure comedians, crumbling sets and disgruntled crew members – a sort of contrived chaos. Michaels is billed as the boy genius, the intrepid leader who’s really not that fearless at all, who all the elder statesman look down upon (a sign that compares the show to a children’s television hour is slapped on the set early in the film, making the crew snigger with disdain). Michaels is only here to function as NBC’s bargaining chip with Johnny Carson – he is being set up to fail, something the movie takes pains to remind the audience of as often as possible.
People are constantly asking Michaels what the show is supposed to be, a question he confidently delivers non-answers to, obfuscating because even he doesn’t really know the answer. No one really believes in him, but the underdog story is essential to the type of mythologizing “Saturday Night” is interested in. The film portrays Michaels as some sort of comedy wizard, letting down-and-out-comedians stay in his house and discovering hilarious writers in bars. Some of these stories might be true (although altered, for cinematic effect). But frankly, it doesn’t matter if most of the film’s funny moments feel like simply an imitation of the original show.
With a few exceptions, the funniest moments in “Saturday Night” tend to be recreations of skits, the kind that sort of make you just want to go home and watch the originals. There are a few genuine, new moments of comedy or heart – but once again, mythology steps in to ruin the moment. As Michaels’ on-the-outs-wife Rosie Shuster, poor Rachel Sennott has to deliver a terribly expository monologue about Michaels’ status as an outsider, the character devoid of any inner life outside of her husband and his legacy.
Some of the performances fall into parody (For some reason, Nicholas Braun plays both Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson), but there are a couple of standouts in a crowded race. Labelle feels entirely too young for the role, but there’s a certain charm to his blunt anxiety. Hunt is quite exceptional as Radner, especially in the quieter moments like the one on the rink with Belushi. Cory Michael Smith (playing Chevy Chase) and Lamorne Morris (playing Garrett Morris) tend to steal whatever scene they’re in, and Nicholas Podany delivers a Billy Crystal impression that is so uncanny, you might think it’s Crystal himself for a moment.
The film is at its best when it forgoes its insistence upon its own importance and opts for something a bit more humanistic. There’s a scene where Michaels’ assistant, Neil (Andrew Barth Feldman), accidentally gets high out of his mind and locks himself in a room. The cast, all dressed in togas for an upcoming sketch, gather outside the door and try to coax him out with silly, boisterous voices and kind words. The moments that work are moments like these – just people, trying to make art together, unaware of the mark they’ll make.
