Music N' Other Drugs

Regardless of what Jason Reitman’s intentions were when he decided that his next project would tackle the tension leading up to the series premiere of what was then called “Saturday Night,” the finished product ends up feeling more like “Saturday Light.” He strings together a series of claustrophobic fly-on-the-wall interactions between the cast, crew, and network executives, but any sense of why this show maintains its cultural importance a half-century later is never really felt.

While we see bits of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and Jane Curtin sprinkled throughout the chaos, none of them are given enough time to make an impact and Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) himself ends up becoming the de facto main character. LaBelle’s performance is fine, but more insight as to why Michaels needed this show to succeed so badly would have been welcome to contextualize the stakes for those not necessarily familiar with every inch of the show’s skeletal structure. He spends a lot of time putting out literal and figurative fires around Studio 8H without ever getting into the weeds of the creative process, but, then again, Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan may have been operating under the assumption that anyone interested in seeing this film is already well-versed in the oral history.

Of course, an entire generation has romanticized the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” so much so that the actual hilarity of that first attempt isn’t as important as the legend. I’ve probably absorbed the lore of SNL more than most, but, if you go back and watch those initial sketches, not everything works as well as people remember. Both the players and the writers got sharper as they went along, so the road to greatness wasn’t paved in one night.

Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, and Tommy Dewey as Michael O’Donaghue end up giving the film the cutting edge it deserved more of, as Morris’s talent shined despite being overshadowed by the narrative of being the only Black cast member, Chase’s ego cuts through every scene he’s in, and O’Donaghue’s pitch black worldview was perhaps the real hero of the original writer’s room. I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that O’Donaghue would find the hagiographic nature of this film’s approach to be a missed opportunity to make a real statement.

The central question I had once the credits rolled was who this film was made for, because Gen-Xers would be better off rewatching the first five seasons on Peacock and Zoomers are more inclined to get their comedy via Tik Tok than a 50-year-old relic whose relevance wanes with each passing year. Our consumption of pop culture has become so decentralized that it’s difficult to envision Americans coming together to watch the same thing at the same time as we once did, so gathering around the water cooler to discuss an opening monologue or a joke made during Weekend Update is no longer a realistic expectation.

Couple that with the fact that Reitman made a film about 1975 by 2024 standards, and it all feels a little too safe to be worthy of Saturday night.