In 1975, on a chilly October evening, just a few minutes before midnight, viewers across the United States encountered an unfamiliar image – a pair of relatively unknown comedians appeared on their screen in a sketch based around an English tutor and his student of indiscernible origins. A couple of minutes of surreal banter was immediately followed by the words “live from New York, it’s Saturday Night”, which are words that were consolidated into history and launched one of the most iconic television programmes in the history of American media. Saturday Night Live has grown from an ambitious experiment springing from the mind of roughly a dozen brilliantly demented individuals into a cultural institution, and one that is this year celebrating its landmark fiftieth season, marking half a century of comedy. No one needs an introduction to the show or its popularity, as there have been countless oral histories, written accounts and various other voyages into the legacy of this long-running variety show, which is not only stronger than ever before but only continues to solidify itself in the global culture, reaching audiences far beyond those expected on that autumnal evening several decades ago. To mark the occasion of their Golden Jubilee, Jason Reitman (in conjunction with co-writer Gil Kenan) takes us back to 1975, where we are invited to observe the events at 30 Rockefeller Plaza as dozens of individuals weave their way in and out of the now-iconic Studio 8H, following them in the ninety minutes leading up to the very first episode of the show. We accompany producer and creator Lorne Michaels as he uses every resource he has at his disposal to ensure that this is not a one-night-only affair, despite seemingly every possible obstacle finding its way into the studio, which only necessitates more innovation from someone whose youth and relative inexperience is easily overcome by the raw ambition and fiery desire to see this show succeed. A film that has been gestating in some form or another for years, Saturday Night proves to be a solid, entertaining comedy that examines the legacy of this show by looking at the events leading up to its premiere, condensed into this charming and slightly unwieldy comedic romp.

Even the most straightforward account of the production of Saturday Night Live makes the same point. This is an intense show that disregards the traditional structure when it comes to producing television, and which is essentially a week-long barrage of high-concept comedy, essentially crafting a bespoke piece of humour in only a matter of days. It is one of the most notorious artistic “pressure cookers”, and has been that way since it premiered half a century ago. As a result, it proved to be fertile ground for further examination, and Reitman takes it upon himself to be the person to create what he hopes will be the definitive dramatisation of the circumstances surrounding the show’s creation. Logically, he could not even fathom the idea of doing a thorough history of the show as it stands today, but rather the focus was on the few hours immediately preceding its premiere, following Michaels and his coterie of like-minded eccentrics as they scramble to put this show together, which we clearly understood to be far from an easy task, especially since continous changes were being made up until quite literally the last moment before it went to air. Producing live television of any form is a deft highwire act and one that is not at all easy to do, with the risk of failure not only being possible but extremely likely. We’ve seen many similarly-themed films focused on the events leading up to a particular event, and choosing to craft Saturday Night as one of these tense, rapid-fire thrillers seemed like a fun idea in theory, particularly since Reitman (who is not always consistent but has proven to have a good command of material when he hits his stride) was born into a comedic family, his father being a close friend and frequent collaborator of many iconic players from the history of Saturday Night Live, meaning that he was at least mostly well-equipped to tell this story. The effort to make a film that served as both a glimpse into the backstage antics that led up to this historical moment and as a wonderful love letter to the industry as a whole did yield quite positive results, even if they are exactly what we expected from this material.

Saturday Night Live has always built itself as a collective effort – the revolving door of castmembers who have called Studio 8H their home over the years contains several remarkable comedic voices, and this isn’t even accounting for those who worked behind the scenes, including the writers and producers that are as integral to the success of the show as everyone else. As a result, this film was always going to need quite a large ensemble, to account for both the Not Ready for Primetime Players and the legions of people behind the camera that made the show possible. Saturday Night contains a cast of dozens, compressed into a single 110-minute film, and which juggles between some well-known young actors, a few veterans and several lesser-known comedians who leap at the opportunity to not only appear in such a major film but to play people who essentially helped give them a career through their revolutionary work on this show. It’s a true ensemble effort, which is meant as both a compliment and criticism – there is a level of detail to making sure everyone involved in the production was given at least one small moment to shine, but when dealing with a cast and crew of over a dozen unique characters, its not possible to give everyone the spotlight in the way they deserve. The film is led by Gabriel LaBelle, who plays Lorne Michaels and proves to have made major improvements after his middling work in The Fabelmans a few years ago, which served as his breakthrough. He’s logically the focus of most of the film, and he proves to be a solid protagonist. The rest of the cast is essentially playing second fiddle, and while some manage to capture their characters brilliantly (such as Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase and Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd), some of the others don’t fare quite as well. Half the cast feels like they are fully immersed in the 1970s atmosphere, whereas others are essentially just dressing in period clothing, and there is a slight incongruity in finding the balance between the two. There are some very good supporting performances, such as Willem Dafoe and J.K. Simmons, who play David Tebbett and Milton Berle respectively (being positioned as villains to the more rambunctious youth of the rest of the cast), but for the most part, Saturday Night is a film driven less by individual performances and more by the collective result.

There are very good components that are found throughout Saturday Night, and it does prove to be a very entertaining film. However, there comes a point where we realize that it is slightly hollow – it is a series of electrifying moments scattered throughout the film, and loosely connected by a fast-paced set of scenes designed to get us from one iconic moment to another. The problem is two-fold, since Reitman spends a bit too much time trying to capture the spirit of that first episode by recreating many of its most famous moments (even though the episode is freely available and can be watched at any time), and struggles to find ways to maintain our attention in those scenes that occur in between, the connective tissue not being particularly noteworthy. Several small flaws would be negligible on their own, but they do compound in such a way that it prevents the film from reaching its full potential. It falters on a few too many occasions and doesn’t seem to have much beneath the surface. It’s certainly not a film made for devotees of the show, since there is very little contained within this film that we didn’t already know – and it can prove to be detrimental to have any knowledge of the production of the show, since not only are we able to predict absolutely every beat (and therefore know exactly how everything will transpire), but the small changes in detail become much larger, and make the inconsistencies very clear. It’s not the “inside baseball” account that we may have expected, and it ends up being quite restrictive in how it structures itself – it purports to be a real-time account of the events but abandons this aspect halfway through when it becomes clear that its logically impossible to include absolutely everything that was intended in such a limited timeframe, and Reitman struggles to leave off certain aspects. It doesn’t necessarily invalidate some of the more notable merits, but it does prevent it from being as rich and evocative an account of this historical event as we may have hoped.

Saturday Night is the kind of film that offers us a solid amount of entertainment and is certainly well-crafted enough to be considered relatively strong as far as period storytelling goes. However, it doesn’t offer us much more than it says on the surface, which may be a sign of consistency and delivering exactly what was promised, but also means that there wasn’t much room for doing anything more than the bare minimum. It’s certainly not bad by any means, and it has its moments of brilliance – the performance of “Nothing from Nothing” leading into the final tense moments just before the show goes on the air and we see a recreation of the iconic first sketch is in itself quite masterful, and had the film matched this same approach, rather than attempting to be some frantic, madcap rush to the finish line that doesn’t quite know how to handle its material in a particularly interesting way, we’d have found this to be a much better film. Reitman was perhaps not the right person to handle the story, since while he is well-connected and has produced a few solid films, he doesn’t have the depth needed to make this as compelling as it could have been. There are a few quite shallow elements that feel like they exist purely for the sake of getting from one point to another without actually saying anything of value, which can slightly diminish the impact made by the film as a whole. It’s a charming account of the events leading to the first episode, but it says nothing we haven’t heard before, nor does it do anything particularly daring. It’s a perfectly solid, middle-of-the-road film that keeps us entertained at the moment and quickly vanishes once we step out of the world of the film, which no level of period-accurate filmmaking can compensate for over slightly lacklustre writing. Saturday Night is an example of a film doing everything right, to the point where it actually feels like its refusal to take a risk makes it less interesting, and ultimately amounts to something serviceable, but far from as captivating as it could have been.