Presented to us as occurring in "real time" as the hour and a half long movie counts down the last 90 minutes before the first episode of "Saturday Night Live" (then called "Saturday Night") went live on air. We are invited to witness and get dragged along backstage as we enter the chaos of this hollywood-magic version of the start of a legendary TV show.
Long time fans of SNL will enjoy spotting the many, many easter egg references to SNL's most-famous and beloved sketches, the majority of which would not have been present and ready before this first showing.
The pace and action are frenetic as disaster after disaster happen while the hundreds of tiny little gears required to make something like SNL all try to come together in some form which will work and produce a viable show by the time the curtain raises.
The character actors chosen to mimic the first cast are spot on and do a great job really embodying what are undoubtedly huge shoes to fill. They are extremely fun to watch and carry the majority of the film with great humor.
But I fear Lorne Michaels was miscast or poorly written, because as our main focus of this maelstrom of frustratingly inept administration, he largely devolved into an amateurish and annoying little twit we keep waiting an waiting and waiting to see rise to the occasion, and never truly does.
He can barely share his vision of the show with mealy-mouthed human words and wanders around from fire to fire, never actually putting any out and immediately forgetting them as he toddles on to the next.
When the first show is pulled off, it's largely because everyone else had been carrying on without him and made it work in spite of him.
I also just irrationally hate his face and the little look he gets when anything goes wrong; it's like an overwhelmed, pissed off toddler is smelling something bad.
This film is a fun bit of nostalgic fantasy homage. A visit from the spirit of SNL past. But it definitely is NOT a biopic recreation of what actually happened, and should not be viewed as such.
This is a film largely for the fans, and other viewers will find it hit or miss, and will most likely find themselves googling the mentioned sketches afterwards.
