‘Saturday Night’ Review: Jason Reitman’s Zany, Brilliant And Outrageously Funny Ode To ‘SNL’s Opening Night Hits The Comic Bull’s Eye -Telluride Film Festival
deadline.comA top director once told me 90% of the success of his movies is casting. If you get that right, you are on your way. If that is the case then Saturday Night director and co-writer Jason Reitman nailed it — and then some.
With a killer ensemble of more than 80 speaking roles helping to bring to life this film detailing the chaotic and quite astounding 90 minutes before Saturday Night Live began its first broadcast on October 11, 1975, this is a masterful movie comedy firing on all cylinders.
With no time to breathe in its tight 103-minute running time, Reitman (with his co-writer Gil Kenan) has mined comic gold in telling the incredible tale of how producer Lorne Michaels navigated a nervous network, bruised egos, an unpredictable cast, a suspicious censor and a whole lot of disasters as the clock ticked down to 11:30 p.m., when it still wasn’t certain, believe it or not, that NBC would press the button for its first SNL or the Johnny Carson Tonight Show rerun they had ready to go in its place.
It was thisclose to not happening, and you have to marvel at everything that could go wrong going wrong in those fateful 90 minutes before showtime.
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