"Are you ready to laugh?" director Jason Reitman asked the audience at the Princess of Wales Theatre before the screening of Saturday Night. "This is one of the not-depressing ones."
Well, kinda. Comedy famously doesn't age all that well, relying strongly as it does on subverting ever-changing social conventions. It's inevitable, then, that a film about the first-ever episode of game-changing sketch show Saturday Night Live would have to contend with the fickleness of comedy as an art form.
Wisely, Reitman doesn't rely too hard on the comedy of the source material, showing viewers enough to get the show's edgy counter-culture vibe across but not relying on the archives to produce many laughs.
Instead, most of Saturday Night is like a stress dream, with show creator Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) racing against the clock to get the show ready for air. It plays out in real time, counting down the 90 minutes before the first episode on October 11, 1975. Actors take drugs and nearly come to blows, the set falls apart, and Michaels must whittle down three hours' worth of material for a 90-minute time slot.
There's no primary point of conflict; rather, viewers are taken from one micro-crisis to another, often involving characters whose names and jobs are unclear, as Michaels ping-pongs around Studio 8H putting out fires to the stressful soundtrack of Jon Batiste's frantic jazz.
With such a large ensemble cast and such a frenetic pace, it's hard for any of the performances to stand out too much — but a tip of the hat to J.K. Simmons and Willem Dafoe for their smarmy roles as old-guard TV dinosaurs, and Nicholas Braun (Succession's Cousin Greg) for playing double duty as Jim Henson and Charlie Kaufman. Having the same comic actor play two quirky roles befits the spirit of the show that gave rise to Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers.
The first 75 minutes or so of Saturday Night are overstuffed, with plenty of stress but nothing to unify it all, giving the film a numbing effect. But it turns a corner in the final chapter, when one character (who's name or role I wasn't clear on, to be honest) rants at Michaels and provides the narrative glue that ties together the many conflicts.
We all know that there's a happy ending, since the show does indeed make it to air, so the struggles makes the final payoff all the more triumphant. After that, be sure to stick around for the perfectly styled credits.