A funny thing happened on the way to kickstarting the seemingly endless celebration for 50 years of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: nobody gave a fuck. At least, not for this Jason Reitman origin film depicting the countdown to the show’s first broadcast. Turns out, SNL’s fan base is wide, but not deep. The film itself generating less laughs than a post-Weekend Update comedy sketch and not helped by loading on show-offy all-star cameos as famous peripheral characters (i.e. J.K. Simmons as comic vulgarian Milton Berle; Willem Dafoe’s NBC program chief Davie Tebet) and using lesser-knowns as original Not Ready For Prime Time Players & staff. And the film ultimately avoids the elephant in the room, the one question that might make this matter: Has there ever been a Pop-culture mediocrity to match SNL in long-running influence? (JAMES BOND? STAR TREK?) How long has it been since Bill Hader’s Stefan or ‘The Californians’ brought consistent laughs to the program? While its political satire has always been toothless. Meanwhile, strictly as film, what’s with Reitman’s technique? Mostly content to pan/scan and run after moving backstage targets, when he does back off the chase to stage a fateful/fretful scene at the Rockefeller Center skating rink, he seems unable to set up reverse-angles between three people. Lucky for him (and the movie), this is basically a show-must-go-on fable, so the last couple of reels inevitably acquire some suspense & momentum. Just not enough to matter. Meanwhile, over on NBC, the celebration continues.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *As per IMDb, WorldWide grosses a pathetic 10 mill.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Strictly speaking, this ought to be labeled READ This Not That as The New Yorker’s Susan Morrison profile of Lorne Michaels (1/20/25) makes this film, if possible, even more unnecessary.
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