Saturday Night

2024   Sony Pictures

Rated:  R

Length:  1 hr  49min

Comedy ~ Drama ~ True Story

Directed by:  Jason Reitman

Starring:  Gabriel LaBelle, Lorne Michaels. Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Lamorne Morris, Kim Matula, Finn Wolfhard, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Kaia Gerber, Tommy Dewey, Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, and J. K. Simmons.

“The writers are stoned, the set is on fire, the sound system is fried, the actors are physically assaulting each other, the crew is in open revolt and they have 90 minutes to figure it all out or the network is pulling the plug.”

Saturday Night is based on the true story of the 90 minutes behind the scenes leading up to the first episode of the show now called Saturday Night Live (SNL) which aired October 11,1975 at 11:30 PM. The cast was an unknown group of comedians referred to as The Not Ready For Prime Time Players. They included Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin, John Belushi, George Coe, Michael O’Donoghue and Laraine Newman. The name was a direct reference to their main competition, Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. ABC’s program, which ran for only 18 episodes, was sports announcer Cosell’s stab at the comedy format.

Howard Cosell’s own rotating group of performers were called The Prime Time Players. That cast included Bill Murray, who’d go on to join NBC’s Saturday Night Live cast in 1977, and This Is Spinal Tap actor-director Christopher Guest, who eventually became an SNL season 10 cast member. The NBC show was renamed Saturday Night Live two years later after Howard Cosell’s show was canceled. SNL has had just under 1000 episodes and is currently in it’s 50th season. It has also featured over 170 cast members, a large number of whom went on to careers in film and tv.

I have been a life long SNL fan for as long as I can remember. I don’t always watch a season, sometimes it’s just not as good as I remember the show being so I pass. There are certain periods/seasons/cast in the show’s history that are just classic and very memorable. I love Weekend Update, that’s probably my favorite sketch. Well, that and the opening sketch is always the best. So when I saw this on Netflix I had to watch it. Wow, what chaos, it must have been quite the experience to have been involved in that first night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t remember if I did watch that first show but I’m guessing that I probably did. I would have been a young teenager and loved staying up late. And I loved comedians, I was a huge fan of Flip Wilson, George Carlin and Bill Cosby to name a few. So I probably did see it but I have to say if you are going to watch the movie, I would check out the first show first. It is available on Peacock for free although you have to jump through a couple of hoops first. I enjoyed it, I thought it was a very interesting look at the drama, politics and resolve it took to make the show happen that first night.

I think they did a great job casting because the resemblances to the original cast are pretty good. And the actors did a great job mimicking the original comedians. The scenes in the original show look just like the scenes in the movie, so they did their homework.

If you are an SNL fan I highly recommend it. If you are not a fan but have an interest in the show and have seen some of the classics, it is worth watching. If you are not a fan of SNL or any of the comedians that have been on the cast or the show, I would say skip it. It’s just not going to make sense to you without the background of the show. So there you go, that’s Saturday Night!

NBC will be broadcasting the original episode Saturday February 15 at 10 PM. The next night Sunday February 16 NBC will air a three hour Prime Time Special commemorating SNL’s 50th Anniversary starting at 8 PM.