Movie review: ‘Saturday Night’ captures the chaotic energy of ‘SNL’ premiere

There’s an existential question that runs throughout “Saturday Night,” Jason Reitman’s love letter to the iconic “Saturday Night Live,” and its chaotic entry into the world on Oct. 11, 1975. People keep asking the show’s creator and producer, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) what, exactly, the show is? It’s a question he’s not able to answer until nearly the end of the movie, at about 11:15 p.m.

The film, which starts at 10 p.m., and takes place over the course of the 90 minutes leading up to the very first live show, utilizes an ominous ticking clock to countdown the minutes until showtime. Over the course of those 90 minutes (which the film, with a run time of 1 hour and 49 minutes, fudges a bit) whatever can go wrong already has, will, or is in the process of going wrong, swirling around the preternaturally calm eye of the storm, Lorne.

The existential question of what this show is or will be thrums underneath the constant churn of crisis that Lorne attempts to manage: will Belushi (Matt Wood) sign his contract? Will NBC exec David Tebet (Willem Dafoe) throw to a Johnny Carson rerun? How should Lorne’s estranged wife Rosie (Rachel Sennott) be credited? Can they find a lighting designer? And those are only a few of the quandaries, qualms and queries that Lorne constantly fields as he attempts to get something resembling television on the air by 11:30 p.m.

Reitman, who co-wrote the script with his longtime collaborator Gil Kenan, has said that he was inspired by a short stint guest-writing on “SNL” to structure this 50th anniversary tribute film around the 90 minutes before the show goes on air. Based on interviews with those who were there, the film is a cavalcade of stars, both in the young actors playing now familiar faces (Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner), and in a couple of high-profile actors making appearances as TV legends (Dafoe; J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle). Comedy nerds will delight in the presence of writers like Alan Zweibel (Josh Brener), Al Franken (Taylor Gray) and Herb Sargent (Tracy Letts).

But Reitman and the talented young cast manage to make “Saturday Night” much more than just young actors having fun in bell-bottoms and wigs. Shot on Super 16mm by Eric Steelberg with an antsy, roaming camera that swoons and zigzags up and down the hallways of 30 Rock, peering into dressing rooms and ping-ponging back and forth between the determined Lorne and his doubting partner, Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), there’s a wild, stimulant-addled energy to the film that is only enhanced by Jon Batiste’s jittery-jazzy score of piano and percussion (the musician also appears as musical guest Billy Preston).

Throughout the chaos, camaraderie and conflict, Reitman and Kenan thread snippets of biographical information, especially about Lorne and Rosie’s relationship, as well as these bigger-picture questions. We witness the nerves, excitement and burgeoning relationships and rivalries that gave the show its frenetic and electrifying energy, and cinematically, Reitman captures all of that and then some.

“Saturday Night” is enormously entertaining and at times excessively busy, though a few bright spots emerge from the crowd, delivering real performances. Smith is astonishing as the arrogant Chase, seemingly channeling him, and LaBelle, one of the most exciting young actors to come along in a long time, steadily and earnestly holds the center as a young Lorne, somehow remaining steadfast in his belief that the show will, and must, go on. Somehow, it does — as we knew it would — when Lorne surrenders to the madness.

As Lorne tries to explain the show to a group of NBC executives, he says that it’s television by and for the people who grew up on it. It’s a generational shift from the vaudeville roots embodied by Berle. He’s attempting to capture lighting in a bottle, to both create culture and reflect it back to the audience, to throw something at the wall and see if it sticks. That such a revolutionary program came about as the result of a contract dispute between NBC and Carson (as explicated in a blow-out argument between Dick and Lorne), only makes it all the more magical that it even exists.

Though “Saturday Night,” the film, feels ephemeral and somewhat fleeting, it represents something that has endured, and continues to, through the sheer force of will that is Lorne Michaels.