Saturday Night

Just ninety minutes stand between you and the culmination of your life’s work. Or: only ninety minutes can protect you from the unfathomable disaster that will sink your career, and the only thing you could ever wish for is more time. Or: only ninety minutes separate you from the quiet realization that you are now so far from where you were supposed to be — though this might not necessarily be a bad thing. Or: these ninety minutes mean nothing to you at all because you will come out on top no matter what happens and you are merely humoring the people whom this time means everything to. Saturday Night features an impossibly large ensemble of characters who must all grapple with what the other side of ninety minutes will look like for their career, their dreams, and most of all, their future. As the fateful 11:30 inches closer and closer, there is a simultaneous thrill that the culmination of these people’s passion will finally see the light of day and dread at how much more could go wrong as problems implode left and right. Yet the tone of the film thankfully chooses to mostly lean into a combination of the two: nerve-wracking anticipation. With its manic score, snappy editing, and witty script, Saturday Night has so much kinetic energy that even if not everything works, there is simply too much to love about it.

Now, the central question in this film is not whether or not the first episode of Saturday Night Live will be a success. Gifted with the knowledge that the show today is a cornerstone of American culture — albeit less so than in previous years — the audience needs more stakes at play in order to feel the tension Lorne Michaels (a fittingly out-of-his-depth Gabrielle Labelle) is facing at every moment. Thus, the film chooses to instead ask “How does the chaos we see on-screen morph into the iconic TV show that is still going strong 50 years later?” And, perhaps even more fundamentally, “What does Saturday Night Live mean to each of these people?” Though there are so many storylines and characters to follow that it is difficult to not get somewhat lost, it is simply euphoric to watch creatives from every field be fully in their element and collaborate to make something special. Yes, there are executives and other soulless entities featured in the film as omnipresent threats, but we thankfully mostly focus on this eclectic group of oddballs chaotically existing in their element. And while no character is fleshed out amazingly, each of the prominent characters has a satisfying arc with their own mini-payoff at the end. Given the sheer size of the ensemble, I consider this an impressive feat. The writing of the characters averages out to be solid, with there being only a handful of standouts on both ends of the spectrum.

The same can be said about the performances, which are generally decent but have clear highs and lows. The best actors feel fully committed to this world of amateurs making things up as they go. Gabriel Labelle as Lorne Michaels is an undeniable standout, even if he is noticeably much younger than the character he was playing. If anything, the age discrepancy helps add to this notion that Michaels is out of his depth. As the Saturday Night Live creator, his role is akin to that of Elmer’s glue: barely holding everything together. Rachel Sennott is magnetic as Rosie Shuster, transforming every conversation into an adventure. But it is Cooper Hoffman who steals the show as Dick Ebersol, an NBC executive who is both sincerely championing Saturday Night Live and doing his absolute best to postpone it. His dynamic with Michaels is fantastic, as he grounds the dreamer with unwelcome but necessary reality checks. Hoffman conveys the duality of his character perfectly and with so much authenticity he almost feels like the protagonist every time he is on-screen. On the other hand, the worst actors feel like terrible impressions in a mercifully forgotten Saturday Night Live sketch. For instance, Nicholas Braun is bafflingly cast as two iconic comedians and brutally butchers both with an awkward delivery that is gratingly non-committal. How the casting director allowed this atrocity to happen, I do not know. Yet by and large, the ensemble is enjoyable if a bit one-dimensionally so. The actors’ willingness to match the manic energy of the script and direction as a whole is perhaps their strongest merit.

Saturday Night is an undeniably flawed film that could have had more impactful performances and more nuanced writing. The characters never quite feel as though they have leapt off the page. Instead, they are largely conduits for fairly witty dialogue and somewhat well-written arcs. But though I have my issues with its depth, I cannot deny how enjoyable I found this film. It is tense, packed to the brim with story, and so bouncy that I could not stop myself from smiling the entire time. There is nothing quite like watching endless creativity come to fruition, both in the context of Saturday Night Live in the film and Saturday Night itself. And because of that, despite my issues with the film, I unambiguously loved it. 

8.5/10