"Your kids aren't ready for primetime."
Vancouver International Film Festival
Despite some hokey elements and an amateur theatre or cosplay vibe to some of the impressions and recreations, Saturday Night has more than enough stress-inducing hysteria to its energetic production. It stars a cast of attractive twentysomethings with Vancouver native Gabriel LaBelle and Cooper Hoffman, both playing a decade older as SNL creator Lorne Michaels and NBC executive Dick Ebersol leading the way alongside Rachel Sennott as writer Rosie Shuster. An insane ensemble of rising young stars—Cory Michael Smith and Dylan O'Brien are pitch-perfect as Chevy Chase and Dan Ackroyd—move in and out of the chaos of the frame while making the best of their limited screen time.
Scripted by Ghostbusters duo Gil Kenan and Reitman, they wisely don't rely too much on the actual comedy material of the show for its humour or laughs. Most of the jokes come from its general mid-'70s counterculture surrounding rebelling at network executive suits while racing against the ticking clock. This film uses Reitman's usual range and scope as a filmmaker to a great degree as it focuses on his strengths of casting, pacing, and style while breezing past any sentimentality, earnestness, or dramatic reveals.
Viewers are invested in Reitman's frenetic pace as Saturday Night's biographical drama feels like pure exasperation without too much substance. It's easy to imagine none of what is depicted in the film actually happened within the preceding ninety minutes to air. Nonetheless, it balances enough of what feels real and is entertaining with various famous faces coming in and out of the night for what would be cemented in television comedy history forever.
Saturday Night screened at the 2024 Vancouver International Film Festival as part of the Special Presentations series at the Vancouver Playhouse.
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