Set in the 90 minutes leading up to the premiere of the very first episode of Saturday Night Live, the story is told with an energy and edginess that captures the chaos behind the scenes as an unproven producer, and a largely unknown new generation of performers and writers, prepare to bring a new comic sensibility to network television and the pop culture landscape.
SNL debuted when I was 13 years old and I started watching it with that very first season. (Monty Python’s Flying Circus began airing on PBS in New York City around the same time, so I was at the perfect age to discover these shows.)
Given my memories of SNL in its early days, it’s amazing to see the actors capture the essence of those original cast members, sometimes simply with a look or a line delivery that gave me deja vu—the entire cast is outstanding from top to bottom. Seeing the re-creation of bits from those early seasons, or the first inklings of classic skits backstage, also triggered my memories.
The film viscerally conveys what was at stake for those involved in the show and how groundbreaking it was at the time. Producer Lorne Michaels' journey as he battles the old guard at the network and struggles to define the show forms the spine of the story, but the arcs and challenges of many of show's cast members are portrayed as well.
The film ultimately ends with great energy, immediately segueing into a nifty end credits sequence—I was buzzing when we walked out of the theater!
Saturday Night is also a solid film that stands on its own. While both my kids know and watch SNL, they’re 21st century babies and don’t know much about the history of the show. But they’ve seen Saturday Night with friends separately from us, and they and there friends were wowed.
By the way, a great companion piece to this film is a season-by-season history of SNL being serialized at the Saturday Night Live Network YouTube Channel that we've been watching. Below is the first episode.
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