Saturday Night Parent Guide

It is October the 11^th, 1975. In 90 minutes, young producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) will take his unique sketch-comedy show live on NBC. The only problem? Nothing is ready.

The sets are still under construction, the sound equipment isn’t working, John Belushi (Matt Wood) hasn’t signed his contract, and NBC exec David Tebet (Willem Dafoe) keeps reminding him that, at the slightest hint of trouble, they’ll cut the broadcast and air reruns of Johnny Carson. To make things worse, Lorne hasn’t figured out the actual content of the show. His material ran three hours in dress rehearsals and must be trimmed down to an hour and a half. And now he has 90 minutes and a building full of drug-addled, sex-crazed misfits who all need something from him to launch Saturday Night Live.

Taking place in almost-real time, Saturday Night is a tantalizing peek behind the curtain of one of the most iconic shows on television in the last 50 years, featuring all the cocaine-snorting, censor-offending, irreverent madness you’d expect. Much like the show, this movie lives and dies on casting. The casting is superb: Kim Matula as Jane Curtin is nearly uncanny, Nicholas Braun is indistinguishable from Jim Hensen, and Cory Michael Smith nails some of Chevy Chase’s mannerisms. JK Simmons puts in an unhinged and unforgettable Milton Berle. It’s a solid group.

There are some hiccups – there’s the unavoidable navel-gazing, rather a lot of profanity and drug use, not to mention the frequent sexual references and a brief, partial glimpse of a man’s genitals. But the brisk pace keeps it moving. Much like the show, if you’re in a bit you don’t like, just wait five minutes. Something else will be going on soon, and odds are you’ll like some of it.

It’s insane, sure. It’s vaguely pointless, absolutely. It’s inarguably strange. As such, this movie is a faithful representation of the early days of SNL, when the cast was crazy, the jokes were bizarre, and the censors were confused. This kooky little time capsule isn’t going to make any converts to the cult of sketch comedy, but seasoned adult fans will undoubtedly have fun with the antics of cast, crew, and everyone else at 30 Rockefeller.