Saturday Night

 

Saturday night !! I got the opportunity to watch the movie Saturday Night on a Wednesday afternoon at the Toronto International Film Festival. The director Jason Reitman was there to introduce the film which was great. He was also there for the Whiplash re-release showing at TIFF so I have been able to see him talk twice this week. He is very funny, swears a lot, and to me is very authentic. For those who don’t know, Saturday Night is a dramedy depicting the night of the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live in the year 1975. Following all the chaos, comedy, and variety of people that made that night's show what it was. This movie was good, I think it was a bit overhyped in terms of festival buzz but I still really enjoyed it. 



The casting for this movie is brilliant. There are so many characters, and I don’t know how they did it but somehow they were able to get screen time for everyone. I love Dylan O’Brien and if anyone has any connection to him at all I’m dying to see him at TIFF and I keep missing him...Just saying... 



Corey Michael Smith who plays Chevy Chase was fantastic. I almost felt as if I was watching a young Chevy on screen. He looks and sounds so much like him, it's remarkable. To see a young Lorne Michaels like this was so crazy. I also didn’t know anything about the history and opening night of Saturday Night Live so it was cool to go back to a time before this iconic show was even on the air. The sketch with Dylan O’Brien on the construction site was hilarious. I came for Dylan O’Brien and I got Dylan O’Brien



I loved this movie except I felt so anxious watching it because there is so much pressure on the main characters and so little time to fix so many problems. I felt like I was there, like there was a ticking time bomb about to go off. It was like a rush of being on a crazy dysfunctional set like this. So I felt so anxious and stressed out for an hour and a half, and so relieved at the end when they went live for the first time. I believe this is the point and was really well done by Jason Reitman, but boy did I not like that feeling for that long. Even though you know the show obviously made it to air, otherwise we wouldn’t have Saturday night Live, it still feels like maybe they won’t actually make it to the broadcast live at 11:30. 


I really liked that it was shot in 16mm, it looks really good. This is a fun movie and it feels like you are watching an absolute circus. I loved that the film opened with the quote from Lorne Michaels “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready. The show goes on because it's 11:30”. Even that already had the audience laughing before the film even started. Its a good movie and I recommend checking it out when it comes to theatres on October 11th 2024!