I bet you thought a film about the behind-the-scenes creation of Saturday Night Live or SNL would be funny. Or dramatic. You never imagined it would be “chaotic”. The Jason Reitman film anticipated by months the great celebration of 2025: the 50th anniversary of SNL, an event that brings together stars and stories.

Reitman is a great director and screenwriter, son of a great comedian, Ivan Reitman, and is known for hits such as Juno and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the perfect choice to capture exactly what SNL is. It’s just not what we imagine!

The proposal of the film is to recreate the premiere night of the program, on October 11, 1975, where a group of unknown young people changed the history of TV and American culture. A brilliant cut, let’s face it because it established several of the rules of SNL, still valid 50 years later, which include improvisation, creativity, madness, and a lot of courage.

Deciding to include such iconic personalities in a film that is neither a documentary nor a comprehensive biopic is courageous on the part of the director because it manages to capture the intent (and details) of the last 24 hours before the premiere. Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) was sure that it would work, but paradoxically, it was when everything went wrong that he was even more certain of the path to follow. He faced the pressure of putting together a completely new sketch show, live and with a subversive tone that was unprecedented for the time while maintaining the audience and not offending the sponsors.

We know he succeeded because in 2025 SNL is still on the air, going strong and this fictional reinterpretation works to leave us astonished at how things can be done in chaos. If Reitman were to follow the “safe” formula, he wouldn’t tell the story of rebels any better. And for us, the laughter is nervous.

We see how everyone is anxious and unsure of how the audience will react to something new after years of having the beloved Johnny Carson in prime time. The choice was not another talk show, but an hour and a half of sketches with unknown people. Initially called “NBC’s Saturday Night”, the name was changed in 1977, and even 90 minutes before going live, Lorne doesn’t know if he has really closed the show. What now?

Several mini-crises intersect with others, everyone is in a hurry and we never see exactly where the scene will cut. The clock and the countdown are always present, but Lorne Michaels’ confidence never falters. It’s a non-stop parade of American comedy legends, and at one point it’s hard to keep them all in mind. Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Jane Curtin (Kim Matula), Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn), Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) and John Belushi (Matt Wood) made history. It’s a shame we don’t delve deeper into their problems.

And here’s SNL‘s “flaw”: even for those who are the target audience’s age, it’s almost impossible to remember who’s doing what, turning the film into content full of inside jokes, things that not even fans can follow. It’s worth checking out if you know each character’s story better. If not? Well, it’s better to watch SNL right away than a film from the show’s past. It’ll be more fun!

Pesquisar

Pesquisar