Directed by: Jason Reitman
Written by: Gil Kenan&Jason Reitman
With: Willem Dafoe, J. K. Simmons and a bunch of not ready for feature film players.
The Good: it’s not yet another Ghostbusters movie.
The Bad: It’s about Saturday Night Live.
Saturday Night is just another installment of the media blitz attempting to convince an unsuspecting public too young to have a first-hand memory of SNL at the beginning that it was ever funny. 50 years of snooze fests, with few exceptions.
Eddie Murphy as a combination of Little Richard and exercise guru Richard Simmons, Little Richard Simmons heads that list. Andy Kaufman, featured on the first broadcast and in the movie, is funny in a bizarre sort of way. He was to appear on five more broadcasts over the years.
I saw the first show and was amazed it survived more than a week. Host George Carlin clearly thought the whole thing was a mess. Chevy Chase and his chronic pratfalls was funny once. Any bit featuring Michael O’Donoghue was banal and devoid of humor.
Humor depends on timing, and the timing of an SNL sketch is always off. They go on far too long, enduring several minutes after the comedy is exhausted. The humor is of the hipster variety, saying, “we know this is stupid, but you are in on the joke.” It would have helped if the joke was funny.
Saturday Night is the story of Lorne Michaels, the ringmaster of a circus of louts. We are told Matt Wood as John Belushi is some sort of comic genius, but seems more like a simian in the Monkey House who stops just short of flinging feces at the audience. He’s a vile little creature.
Michael O’Donoghue’s smug superiority and condescending attitude is no better. I’d not be surprised to learn he was the victim of repeated schoolyard beatings as payment for his self-deluded superiority. His Black Humor was more black than humorous. He seemed a David Lynch wannabe.
The SNL movie menagerie is composed of the well named Not Ready for Prime Time Players. Much of the viewers attention is occupied by attempting to connect what actor with what NRFPT player. The whole thing is such a confused mess you just give-up, not caring.
Stock villains in the form of network executives put in an appearance. They just do not see Lorne Michaels as the visionary he knows himself to be; Or, not to be.
Things look bad for SNL making the airwaves until at the last moment when Andy Kaufman performs his Mighty Mouse act and the evil NBC poo bah sees that Michaels is a man of vision and throws the On Air switch. (A man of reason would see Andy Kaufman as the visionary.)
Throughout the entire 109 minutes of Saturday Night Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris repeatedly asks Michaels, What am I doing here?”
The viewer would be well to ask the same question.
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