Movie Review: Saturday Night
Director: Jason Reitman
Runtime: 1h 49m
D-
Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!
And with those iconic words first spoken by Chevy Chase back in 1975 the SNL legend was born.
50 years later we have the major motion picture about that first night, Saturday Night.
The movie takes the audience through the chaos, frustration, and almost not aired first episode. The first half of the movie is like a long tracking shot through the corridors and backstage of preparation.
The second half slows down a bit to go deeper into the fact that SNL was chosen to fail due to a contract dispute with Johnny Carson and Lorne Michaels being a nobody that was being bet on to not succeed.
The problem with this movie is it never really decides what it wants to be. It’s either too all-over-the-place to try and throw you into the chaos which doesn’t work at all and instead is an anxiety inducing mess or it doesn’t go deep enough to explode any one character or issue.
On top of that, the sheer schmaltz of trying to throw in legendary skits during the rehearsals leading up to 11:30pm is cringe-inducing and is fairly insulting truth be told.
Saturday Night had such potential but instead it felt like an awful hangover on Sunday morning.