Saturday Night captures the energised rush of an US institution

When you break down the logistics of Saturday Night Live – the US comedy showcase that recently began its record-breaking 50th season – it is a miracle that it gets made at all. Each week a celebrity host mucks in for a range of hastily written topical skits and parodies, interspersed with regular segments, pre-filmed sketches and performances from a musical guest. 

The resulting 90-minute jamboree is then broadcast late and live from NBC’s studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza with the occasional script flubs and technical snafus all part of the package. It is apparently a hoot for everyone involved, although viewed from the UK in the cold light of day the garishly lit clips suggest that you probably have to be there to fully appreciate the experience. 

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Are you also required to be au fait with the arcane history and traditions of SNL to enjoy Saturday Night, which dramatises the nervy couple of hours before the show’s first ever live broadcast on 11 October 1975? Not really. Even its boyish chief architect Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing. 

As the deadline to the live premiere ticks closer, baffled NBC suits keep asking him: “What is the show?” Michaels, caught up in a whirlwind of competing production demands and contract headaches, simply cannot come up with a pat answer. But the excellent LaBelle (who previously played a soulful stand-in for young Steven Spielberg in The Fabelmans) leaves you in no doubt that having assembled a motley crew of acidic comedy writers and hungry young performers, Michaels knows he is onto something – if his big swing doesn’t just explode on the launchpad.

Saturday Night contains roughly a million other subplots as its sprawling ensemble cast pinball around a painstakingly accurate reproduction of studio 8H. The scathing Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) trades quips with motormouth Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien) while already imagining his next big career leap. Gifted impressionist Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn) attempts to shave seconds off her quick-change technique to ensure she will be in the right costume at the right moment. The less eager-to-please John Belushi (Matt Wood) simply growls at anyone attempting to shave off his Wolverine mutton chops.

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It’s the sort of behind-the-curtain chaos and clashes of ego we are familiar with from The Larry Sanders Show, West End stage hit The Play That Goes Wrong, Tiswas or even The Muppet Show. Jim Henson is even on standby in studio 8H ready to perform despite the fact that some mean-spirited writers and cast members keep leaving his puppets in compromising positions (the sweet, hippyish Henson is played by Nicholas Braun from Succession, who also doubles up as dedicated absurdist Andy Kaufman). Meanwhile, live sketches are frantically rehearsed, wobbly light rigs threaten to crash down and a religious-minded censor is going through the bawdy scripts with a big red pen. The result is a lovingly conceived, well-executed farce with gorgeous 1970s production design. 

The alarmingly fresh-faced main cast are balanced out by a sprinkling of older hands, with Willem Dafoe as a wolfish NBC power-player, Matthew Rhys as bewildered guest host George Carlin and JK Simmons as veteran TV superstar and inveterate horndog Milton Berle, who makes a huge impression in a mere handful of scenes. 

The zig-zagging action feels like a lark but there is a spike of emotional investment when Michaels belatedly learns that his paradigm-smashing counter-culture experiment has only been greenlit so NBC can use it as a bargaining chip in an ongoing dispute with their chat show king Johnny Carson. After that revelation you really want the baby-faced Michaels to stick it to the suits.

Saturday Night was directed and co-written by Jason Reitman, who was only born in 1977. But as the son of Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, he apparently grew up surrounded by SNL alumni such as Aykroyd and Bill Murray and was such a fan of the show he petitioned his agent in 2008 to essentially do a week’s work experience on it (Michaels agreed). 

In the process of pulling the script together, Reitman claims to have talked to every surviving cast and crew member from the 1975 premiere to gather material. The result could easily been a mawkish, self congratulatory bit of mythmaking. But thanks to the headlong pace and looming deadline it is an energised rush, like being an actual part of SNL rather than passively watching it.

Saturday Night is in cinemas now.

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