Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt
Have I Seen it Before: I’ve heard all the stories before, if not quite in this combination. I’ve seen the documentaries, and I’ve read Live from New York*. I know all about everyone hating the Muppets, and Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) almost being a part of show one, and even Milton Berle’s (J.K. Simmons) penis*.
One might wonder why I watched a new release right in the middle of catching movies at a film festival. I may have really wanted to go see the 70th anniversary revival of Seven Samurai (1954), but as it turned out, so did everyone else at the festival. We had to make quick changes, and this was a pretty good consolation prize.
Did I Like It: That is all to say, I generally liked the film very much.
The casting is unassailably great. I struggle to find a weak link in the entire ensemble. Matt Wood is the embodiment of John Belushi, to the point where I wondered if they somehow resurrected him. Others may not be quite as spooky, but Cory Michael Smith’s channeling the soul of Chevy Chase, and Dylan O’Brien’s mastering of the Dan Aykroyd cadence are certainly highlights. I love any opportunity to see Lamorne Morris at work, and having him play Garrett Morris is maybe the only obvious note of casting in the whole affair, but all is forgiven when its a running race between him and Andy Kaufman (Nicholas Braun, who also plays perpetually put-upon Jim Henson) for which depiction I like the most. While Matthew Rhys’ performance as George Carlin (the first guest host of the program) is serviceable, the makeup job to make Rhys look like Carlin is more than worthy of some Academy attention in the spring.
The story’s breakneck pace guarantees that certain liberties are taken with the fall of 1975, but many, many of them can be forgiven. While the show existing in the first place as a byproduct of a Johnny Carson powerplay is true, it wasn’t like it went up to the last minute before they were going to decide to even air the show, but it feels right. The moments that ring less thematically true pile up in the film’s final act. Hunt is tragically underused as Gilda Radner (especially as he performance taps well into the manic sweetness that made Radner a star), chiefly musing with Belushi about how they might look back on this night in twenty years, when neither of them were going to make it that far. This, shortly after Lorne Michaels (LaBelle, little Sammy Fabelman no longer) hires longtime writer Alan Zweibel (Josh Brener) minutes before showtime. It’s a one-two punch of supreme based-on-a-true-story bullshit. If we had gotten to see Zweibel already a part of the writing staff, we could have seen the truly lovely friendship between him and Radner. It’s a huge missed opportunity for the movie.
*Although I am reading the recent revision. There’s probably some good stories in the last few years, not the least of which would include the absolutely lame horror of having certain politicians (you know who you are…) hosting in the new millennium.
**In the movie, he shows it to Chevy, but I’m almost sure he actually showed it to one of the writers, probably Zweibel. Thematically, it somehow feels right to show it to Chase.