David Farnor | On 12, Apr 2025

Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith
Certificate: 15

It’s been 50 years since a gang of comedians gathered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York to try something new. Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night takes us back to 11th October 1975, the first time that Saturday Night Live was broadcast from NBC’s headquarters. Things start off chaotically – and then get more chaotic from there.

From 30 Rock to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the legacy of SNL has been explored on screen several times, as people try to capture the behind-the-scenes magic that goes into making live comedy. Reitman’s affectionate biopic is suitably anarchic, and in that sense more than any other it’s a rollicking success.

Gabriel LaBelle stars as Lorne Michaels, the young Canadian with a vision of starting a revolution, and it’s a superb leading turn, one that allows him a sense of scrambling desperation without losing his certainty and drive. It’s a rounded, living, breathing performance and it grounds everything else around him in something real. The more events unfold, the more important that becomes, as Reitman and Gil Kenan’s script frequently deviates from fact for the sake of tension and conflict.

We immediately learn, for example, that the head TV honchos are rooting for the show to fail – and ready to jump instead to a tape of Johnny Carson, who’s in the middle of negotiating a contract renewal with them. A threatening call with Carson ups the ante, while Willem Dafoe is clearly having a ball as TV exec David Tebet, watching everything like a chain-smoking hawk. And, just to pile on the pressure, JK Simmons drops a deliciously nasty cameo as Milton Berle, a veteran variety TV star who arrogantly looks down on this gaggle of youngsters.

The crew on the show are equally rebellious about the whole endeavour, with tech failures, falling lighting rigs and more all threatening to upend Michaels’ dream. The comics, meanwhile, are all nervous and concerned about not getting their moment in the spotlight. Reitman and DoP Eric Steelberg pinball between it all with a non-stop liveliness that feels like Birdman’s caffeine-fuelled cousin. Long takes glide through Studio 8H and its surrounding corridors, stairwells and meeting rooms, and the intentionally choppy rhythm turns into a groove that keeps each vignette feeling fresh – and us feeling as unsure as the players that the show will go on at all.

All this could fall apart if the casting wasn’t spot-on, but the ensemble are uncannily good, sitting just on the right side of impersonation. Cory Michael Smith and Dylan O’Brien step into the shoes of Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd, while Matt Wood distils the manic energy of the misunderstood John Belushi. The always-brilliant Lamorne Morris elevates the role of Garrett Morris and Nicholas Braun is hilarious doing double eccentric duty as Jim Henson – and, after Benny Safdie pulled out, Andy Kaufman. Nicholas Podany does a superb young incarnation of Billy Crystal and Tommy Dewey is enjoyably sharp as head writer Michael O’Donoghue. The amusing Ella Hunt, Emily Fairn and Kim Matula sadly get less screentime as Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman and Jane Curtin, but Shiva Baby’s Rachel Sennott steals several scenes as Rosie Schuster, who was married to Michaels until 1980, and brings a gentle emotional arc to proceedings.

Their relationship is the closest the film gets to something nuanced and thoughtful, opting instead to keep the momentum up and focus on the madcap surface. But that visceral, lightning-in-a-bottle excitement is what makes Saturday Night such a joy to watch – it’s a celebration of SNL’s freewheeling alchemy, distilling its spirit into a breathtaking 90-minute caper that captures the thrill of live entertainment. It’s not a history book, and that’s precisely why it works.

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