Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night made its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day weekend, where it generated some serious buzz—at least among those who were lucky enough to snag a ticket.
Variety’s Clayton Davis reported that the film’s first screening saw nearly 300 people turned away, with moviegoers lining up almost five hours early for a chance to get a sneak peek at the highly anticipated Saturday Night Live biopic. Davis is also expecting the flick to receive some attention during the upcoming awards season, calling it a “strong contender across several Oscar categories, including Best Picture.”
The cast’s performances were a high point for critics almost across the board, with Gabriel LaBelle’s portrayal of Lorne Michaels and Lamorne Morris’ take on Garrett Morris lauded as two of the movie’s standouts.
While Davis described LaBelle’s performance as “electric,” The Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Farber wrote that the 21-year-old actor, who first charmed audiences in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans (2022), tackled the role “with energy and the right note of befuddlement.”
“Lamorne Morris gives a sharp performance as Garrett Morris,” Farber added, while IndieWire described Morris’ portrayal as “note-perfect.”
While Variety noted that “it’s hard to single out one standout performance,” the outlet cited actor Tommy Dewey’s turn as Michael O’Donoghue as another highlight. Rachel Sennott is also earning praise for her portrayal of writer Rosie Shuster, although the critical consensus seems to be that the movie’s female roles were too underdeveloped to allow its actresses to really shine.
“The women in the cast—Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, and Jane Curtin—are given short shrift,” writes THR‘s Farber.
Even so, most felt the film’s stacked ensemble made for a winning team.
“The movie’s cast mimics the show’s cast well, but they never feel like they’re doing impressions,” wrote New York Magazine and Vulture film critic Bilge Ebiri.
Variety also pointed out that the movie’s 20-person ensemble could break a record for most actors nominated for a SAG Best Ensemble Award.
Beyond the acting plaudits, reviewers largely seemed to agree that Saturday Night succeeds in maintaining a breakneck pace that ratchets up the tension for the audience as the film’s countdown to the first-ever episode of SNL approaches. “Saturday Night is such a marvel of a level of zany manic non-stop energy that even the Marx Brothers would be jealous at the pace set here,” wrote Pete Hammond at Deadline.
“The frenzied nature of the filmmaking rarely settles on any big scenes, which forces the actors to fill in their parts with a combination of acting strokes and our own shared memory,” wrote Ebiri, adding: “Saturday Night might not be factually accurate, but it feels spiritually true.”
“Reitman brilliantly captures the chaotic frenzy behind the scenes as a ragtag group of young, untested comedians attempts to make television history,” Awards Daily raved. “The film vividly portrays the turmoil.”
The film was not without its detractors. IndieWire’s David Ehrlich seemed particularly unimpressed, calling Saturday Night “tedious and exasperatingly self-absorbed.”
“If Saturday Night weren’t so blithely solipsistic, perhaps Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan might’ve clocked the perversity of trying to recapture that energy with such a pre-settled piece of nostalgia porn,” he wrote.
Ehrlich went on to say the film leans too much on inside-baseball knowledge of SNL lore. “Forget in-jokes or fan service, this is a movie so long on cos-play (much of it brilliant) and short on character development (none of it interesting) that it requires a casual knowledge of the show’s lore to understand, let alone to enjoy.”
That sentiment was shared by Rolling Stone’s David Fear, who felt that the movie “Sometimes feel[s] as if you’re walking through an exhibit devoted to the show rather than watching a movie about its beginnings… Saturday Night Live has long swooned over its own self-mythology, and Saturday Night is happy to add to that back-patting as the show’s golden anniversary approaches.”
“Those who remember the excitement of SNL‘s early years will want to catch up with this revolutionary moment in TV history, but younger viewers may not find enough here to tickle or tantalize,” echoed The Hollywood Reporter.
Reviewer Robert Daniels was also unmoved, calling the movie “pretty dire” and noting that it “Says nothing interesting about the show, sketch comedy, or really anything. [It] lacks characters with depth (these are merely impressions). And is nauseatingly self-serving. There’s nothing there.”
However, those viewers who approached Saturday Night expecting a fun recounting of a moment in television history seemed to get what they came for.
“Is it deep? Not really. But is it much better than anyone probably expected this kind of movie to be? Absolutely,” Next Best Picture’s Will Mavity concluded. “Saturday Night is fun and, more importantly, manages to be so without lazily repurposing iconic SNL bits for comedy. Sometimes, it feels like a cop-out to say a movie is just ‘fun’ and nothing more, but that is precisely the case here.”
Saturday Night currently sits at 82 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and is pulling a “generally favorable” 65 on Metacritic. Those numbers are bound to change in the coming weeks as the flick makes its way to Michaels’ hometown for the Toronto Film Festival next week and finally arrives in theaters on October 11.
Get stories like this in your inbox: Sign up for LateNighter’s free daily newsletter.
