Saturday Night
Directed by Jason ReitmanOp 11 oktober 1975 om 23.30 uur veranderde een woeste groep jonge komieken en schrijvers de televisie voor altijd. Dit is het verhaal van wat er achter de schermen gebeurde in de 90 minuten voorafgaand aan de eerste uitzending van Saturday Night Live.
Saturday Night Ratings & Reviews
- rg940021 november 2024Throughout Saturday Night, characters ask Lorne Michaels what type of show is he making. Lorne constantly defers answering this question, hoping it will all come together by the deadline. In a similar vein, this movie is also unable to really decide what it wants to be, hoping something manages to shine through by the end of its runtime. I'm not entirely sure anything does, outside of the fact that they have managed to cast a talented group of young actors and actresses that will be part of the future of Hollywood, in the same way those unknowns would be cast into fame through SNL. The movie has this pulse-pounding score that filters in and out, synchornizing with the minutes ticking on the clock that appears as an interstitial between scenes. The camera follows Lorne around, characters scream, and everything seems to go wrong. The movie wants you to feel the pressure, to feel the deadline approaching, to go along with the frenetic energy and pace. Gabriel LaBelle does a good job showcasing the way the pressure starts to build, but I can't help but feel like this movie almost feels like propaganda in the way it seems to indicate he managed to overcome those odds. There isn't some defining character motivation or themes or revelation, he just pushes through and it all ends up working because I guess he's just that talented. We already know that the show is going to be successful, so the movie needs to make us care about more than just things coming together. Lorne is that heart, and it fails to make him compelling by trying to mythologize him instead. Outside of that, none of the other characters are done well at all. There's something related to Rosie and her marriage to Lorne, yet the movie fails to give it enough depth, leading to her choice of whether or not to use Lorne's last name falling completely flat. Outside of that, I guess there was some focus on Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, and John Belushi? They have screentime, but their conflicts are never really given explanation, their motivations and inner workings are completely opaque, and the movie sort of just forgets about those conflicts by the end. Other characters are even worse, with the female SNL stars being essentially just props. The movie is trying to include so much that I didn't even g et to Cooper Hoffman's character or Nicholas Braun or the writer. Considering the amount of characters and the screentime, it isn't shocking that it fails to do any of these characters justice, but the movie *attempts* to include them. But it's better to say they are just set dressings to showcase how things went wrong for Lorne. One last thing...for a movie about a comedy legend, there is so little humor in this movie. I guess it tries at times, but it's mostly through the sketches, which land with a thud. By the end of the movie, Lorne does manage to give some description for his show, and it still feels like he's grasping at straws, saying platitudes that he hopes will sound somewhat intelligent (though the movie treats these as words of wisdom). The movie also feels like it is grasping at straws and blowing hot air, never really able to convey any semblance of depth or meaning.
- neuroparadox29 juli 2025Worth the price of admission just to finally see J.K. Simmons' actual cock. Avoids being a series of impressions because you can tell the actors are paying honest homages to some of their comedy heroes. Very well done for how many people are in this movie and not just cameos (I see you, Tracy Letts!) I wish they announced the end credits cast list like the SNL intro, but maybe they did it out of respect for Don Pardo 🤷♂️ Very funny, everyone kills it. No notes. 🚫🗒️
- wonderrxjr12 oktober 2025Honestly I think it's a miracle this show makes it to air any week let alone the first. Liked the fun, highly dramatized take of the first episode ! Love SNL and this made me really want to delve in to the history of the show more. Cooper Hoffman, you just truly kill it in everything you do huh. I liked how fast paced and crazy everything was. I loved the portraly of Chevy Chase, but yeah he should have been a bigger ass tbh
- Kevin Ward1 juli 2025Saturday Night delighted me much more than I was expecting. The entire cast is just too much fun not to have a blast, particularly if you have even a little nostalgia for the Not Ready for Primetime Players. Jason Reitman presents the film in real-time encompassing the 90 minutes leading up to the very first episode. It’s obviously fanciful to believe all these things happened before the very first airing, but I think it worked really well to attempt to distill all of that zaniness and chaos into a single night rather than to tell a sweeping decade spanning historical epic. The timeline gives the film a sense of urgency as does Reitman’s PTA-style long tracking shots and whip pans. I love a script that utilize callback, setups and payoffs, and this film uses them very well and it made for an crowd pleasing experience at the packed VIFF theater. YMMV depending on how much love you have for early SNL or even just how familiar you are with some of the most famous early sketches, but that’s not to say it’s completely inaccessible if you’re not familiar.
- Yuvi Randhawa21 juni 2025chaos, chaos, and even more chaos
- Scott20 oktober 2024I saw the vision since the casting was pretty spectacular but I think it needed a faster, punchier director like an Ed Wright to make the walk-and-talk really pop.
- unorganizedaccount16 juni 2025like seeing old sets ig
- jackmeat1 juni 2025My quick rating - 7.0/10. Yes, Saturday Night, not to be confused with the feverish kind involving disco balls and Travolta hips, but rather the type that redefined late-night television and turned sketch comedy into an American institution. This 2024 behind-the-scenes dramatization of the chaos leading up to the very first broadcast of Saturday Night Live is part historical homage, part controlled trainwreck—and somehow it works. As someone who’s been riding the SNL rollercoaster longer than I’ve had a bedtime, I went into Saturday Night with the kind of skepticism reserved for reboot trailers and “Best of” compilations that snub Phil Hartman. Hell, I still remember peeking from behind the recliner and watching Steve Martin perform King Tut the first time. That was 1978. But this film? It earns its laughs—and its anxiety sweats. We’re dropped into the heart of 30 Rock at 11:30pm on October 11, 1975, where a young Lorne Michaels (played with neurotic finesse by Gabriel LaBelle) is trying to hold together a sketch show with the structural stability of a gingerbread house in July. His wife Rosie (Rachel Sennott, still riding the quirky paranoia wave from Holland) adds some marital spice to Lorne’s backstage meltdown. They argue, they stress-smoke, they emotionally spiral—just like the real SNL writers' room, probably. The standout here is Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, who struts around like he’s already America's Sweetheart and knows it. His exchange with Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons) was absolute gold. His smugness is so potent, you’ll feel the urge to roll your eyes on behalf of Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt). The rest of the cast channels the energy of comedy titans in their “before they were famous” phase, and while it’s admittedly weird watching people pretend to be Belushi or Aykroyd, it’s all handled with enough care and charm to sidestep uncanny valley territory. What truly sells Saturday Night is the frenzied pacing and on-point aesthetic. The costumes are polyester perfection, and the editing captures that live-TV-on-the-verge-of-collapse feeling. It’s not a smooth ride, but it’s not supposed to be. This is a film about chaos birthing brilliance. The vibe is: "What if Uncut Gems had punchlines and bell-bottoms?" Accuracy-wise, who knows? Some moments feel gloriously exaggerated, but honestly, if even 40% of this madness is based on fact, then Lorne deserves a lifetime supply of Xanax and Emmys. It’s not a perfectly even film, but it earns its place in the pantheon of love letters to comedy. Saturday Night doesn’t try to cover all 50 years (thankfully), but instead zooms in on the beautiful, terrifying mess that was the beginning. And really, isn’t that what great sketch comedy is all about?
- Rob Logan | The Geek Generation14 januari 2025I had a blast with this. Jason Reitman continues to be one of my favorite modern directors and infused this movie with so much frenetic energy. Whoever was in charge of casting deserves all the awards, because every actor disappeared into the character they were playing to the point where I felt like I was watching the original SNL cast. I do wish that during the credits they had included portions of the original sketches or their cast recreating them. That would have been fun.
- Scott Smith12 januari 2025Good movie. Great casting. So many of the actors looked and sounded like the old SNL cast. I watched the first 1975 episode of SNL immediately afterwards. Fun stuff.
- Chris11 januari 2025“Art is but a measure of sacrifice and tears.” Lorne Micheals Pretty entertaining film. The cast held strong and an interesting story. 🤩🍾🎭🎬🎟
- vangh114 december 2024This movie doesn't spoon feed you anything at all. You don't get any real sense of who these people were prior to tonight beyond a line or two, you don't get any payoff in terms of what happens with the show, it's runner or the cast after that night (which is less egregious because you probably already know). This movie really is just is "Here is some crazy stuff that happened on the set of Saturday Night Live back in '75." There's so many moving parts and so many real, famous people they have to account for that nobody beyond Lorne really gets enough screen time to grow, change, learn, or be anything more than a moment of, "Hey, I know them! Wow, the actor portraying them nailed it!" The unsung hero in my book is Andrew Barth Feldman as Lorne's cousin Neil. He inexplicably gets nearly as much screen time as some of the main cast but he kills it as a kid beyond his depth doing his best. Peeking his head in the stairwell and cheerily stating, "25 minutes!" with excitement while Lorne and Ebersol are having it out was perfection. I really struggle with how much we're told instead of shown in regard to Belushi. He's compared to Brando, he's doted on and treated with kid gloves as much as possible because he's so needed but despite being told throughout, I didn't ever really feel it. The growing laughter at his Weekend Update bit felt disingenuous ("and then the whole place broke out in spontaneous applause, I swear to God!") and with Chevy and Akroyd I thought they managed to do just enough that you feel who they are and why they're there (Chevy with his verbal sparring matches, Akroyd with his lighthearted bouncing from person to person) but with Belushi we only really see him being a problematic hot head. Lamorne Morris and Kim Matula soar in their limited time. Lamorne pulled off the closest to a 1-to-1 experience with the actual person he was portraying. Overall I thought the brick laying metaphor became a little too heavy handed by the end. They really double underlined and circled the meaning of it by the time the last brick was laid. I have one REALLY BIG bone to pick with this movie. Why the hell did they double cast Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson?!? You cannot double cast an actor playing Andy Kaufman. The whole movie I was like, "Haha, yep, Andy Kaufman be crazy! He's pretending to be Jim Henson and no one has noticed" and then I started thinking "Andy is really playing Jim Henson straight, but I guess he's just super committed to the bit" and then ultimately it's just, nope, for no good reason Nicholas Braun is doing double duty. YOU CAN'T DO That! I still have questions about who Lorne is and where he came from. I still have questions about his relationship to Rosie and her relationship to Dan Akroyd. I admit I understand a LOT more about Milton Berle than I did previously. But the movie doesn't try to be anything other than a fly on the wall during the production of a damn crazy thing, and in that I would call it a success.
- astace19661 december 2024A film that's very relevant to those that are familiar with the show, otherwise, the numerous characters don't mean a lot.
- David Daniel15 november 2024Great production, great performances, repetitive script
- Shamus2k12 november 2024Well presented peek into the chaos of the first live broadcast of the iconic TV show, Saturday Night Live. It may be lost on younger generations.
Saturday Night Trivia
Saturday Night was released on 11 oktober 2024.
Saturday Night was directed by Jason Reitman.
Saturday Night has a runtime of 1 u, 49 m.
Saturday Night was produced by Peter Rice, Jason Reitman, Gil Kenan, Jason Blumenfeld.
Op 11 oktober 1975 om 23.30 uur veranderde een woeste groep jonge komieken en schrijvers de televisie voor altijd. Dit is het verhaal van wat er achter de schermen gebeurde in de 90 minuten voorafgaand aan de eerste uitzending van Saturday Night Live.
The key characters in Saturday Night are Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith).
Saturday Night is rated 16.
Saturday Night is a Komedie, Drama, Historisch film.
Saturday Night has an audience rating of 8.3 out of 10.
Saturday Night had a budget of US$ 25 mln..
Saturday Night has made US$ 10,1 mln. at the box office.