Saturday Night

One of the year's most unusual biopics?

This review was supposed to be for Piece by Piece, the new Pharell Williams biopic that stars himself in CGI Lego form. But there was no audio during my screening, and the sound system failed to boot up in time for the feature presentation. So, that was that. 

But, hey, at least they trailered the right Dog Man movie. 

In the meantime, I’ll give the review spot to Saturday Night, in which Jason Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan depict the frantic ninety-minutes on October 11, 1975, before Saturday Night Live - then called NBC’s Saturday Night, first went on the air.

Actually, the film is only 109 minutes long, which means it cheats with real time. But for Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), the creator and longtime producer of SNL, those 109 minutes might as well be ninety, or even fifty. It's a mad dash to convince David Tebet (Willem Dafoe) to let the show go on, rather than a Tonight Show rerun. A few posters perfectly summarized how wrong everything went in those ninety minutes. I'll elaborate on a few of them.

Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien) argues over the specifications of a prop gun in a sketch. Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris, no relation), Aykroyd's sketch partner, is annoyed with playing stereotypes. John Belushi (Matt Wood) not only refuses to sign his contract, but picks fights at the drop of a hat. Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) gets a dressing down by comic legend Milton Berle (JK Simmons), whom Tibbet wants to host. A lighting apparatus crashes on the set and nearly burns it down. Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun) and George Carlin (Matthew Rhys) feel out of place in the madness. The punchline on the first Weekend Update falls flat. Yes, this cast is huge, and the problems are plenty.

It's sometimes uncanny how accurate the impressions are. The cast, especially O'Brien and Smith, nail enough of their characters' inflections that they feel like them. When Johnny Carson calls up Michaels with words of discouragement, it sounds so much like him and not actor Jeff Witzke. Braun would make a great Kermit the Frog if his Henson were any indication. He also doubles as Andy Kaufman, who spends the film as his loopy Foreign Man persona and is easily precise to what I've seen of the man. Brian Welch, as longtime announcer Don Pardo, is also a stunning match for his actual persona.

What else can I say about this large cast? We barely get to see Wood's Belushi as anything other than volatile. He and Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) have a quiet scene near the end, but that's it for his perspective. He even flips out over a polaroid camera product placement; context, anyone? Catherine Curtin is quite amusing as Joan Carbunkle, the network's extremely strict censor, especially when she deals with the writers. Michaels has a decent subplot where he and his wife, Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott) ponder which credit to use for her in the opening. The cast's final and impromptu dress rehearsal, which is led by Andy's timely preview of his Mighty Mouse skit, is the film's best scene. 

The dress rehearsal gives Morris a great musical number - you might know which one - accompanied by musical guest Billy Preston (Jon Batiste, this film's composer). Batiste's score is pretty good, while his musical performances as Preston are dynamite. The cinematography by Eric Steelburg, which was done on 16mm film, is quite striking, especially in its oners. There's a great one in the opening as we follow Michaels dealing with all the mayhem around him. Although we know the premiere's ultimate fate, there's some good suspense milked by the editors as the cast and crew wait Tebet's word to air. The show's first sketch, which is the last scene, wasn't that suspenseful in real life, but I was still hooked as I waited Belushi to show up.

There's a lot going on in Saturday Night, much like the famous show that it centers on. A few names get lost in the shuffle of its massive cast, even if you remember what they did. It's still worth watching for the impressive commitment of that massive cast. There's a lot of stuff I'm leaving out of this review, and I think you'll be amused by plenty of them. See it soon to see what I mean.

Anyway, Live from Modesto, it's Saturday Afternoon!