Few things have transcended to a level of Pop Culture Pantheon so much so that they are universally known and beloved. Television especially because it seems like there is a shelf life for sitcoms and dramas. But, in my personal opinion, the one that has become the pinnacle of that is Saturday Night Live. It has become a cultural staple of one night a week. Much like how Football rules our television screens all day Sunday, SNL has become the one consistent on network television on one night of the week for half a century.

 

It is something that everyone has seen at least a couple times in their life, continuing to churn out Hollywood’s biggest stars for nearly 6 decades now. The greats of comedy have found their footing there at Studio 8H - Chase, Aykroyd, Radnor, Murray, Murphy, Myers, Sandler, Rock, Ferrell, Fey, Poehler, Wiig - it’s a list I could go on and on about. Yet there has been this incredibly shrouded allure to it all - the pains and the process, the ups and downs. Which begs the question, how did this juggernaut of late night get its start? Director Jason Reitman (Up in The Air) teams with pal and fellow/writer-director Gil Kenan (Ghostbusters: Afterlife) to bring us this frenetic and funny insight into the makings of night one of Saturday Night, that at times almost seems too crazy to believe actually happened.

 

Running a lean and mean 108 minutes, the movie's pacing is its golden ticket - taking us along for the ride, almost like a fly on the wall, for what is 90 minutes prior to showtime for the first ever episode of the series. We meet Lorne Micheals, played by Canada’s own Gabriel LaBelle, anxiously trying to prep his cast and crew for an evening that will either make or break their careers. He’s confident yet just a little cocky. Likable yet almost arrogant. You feel the anxiety coursing through his veins and it’s clear that nothing is going to plan as the minutes tick by. And thanks to this frantic yet courageous demeanor, we root for Michaels’ and his cast almost from the first frame. It’s hard not to like him, because he wants to challenge the cultural and comedic landscape of the time - a step that, over time, proved to obviously be the right one.

 

Surrounding LaBelle is a slam dunk cast, featuring Rachel Sennot as his ex-wife Rosie Shuster, while Lamorne Morris, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Kim Matula and Dylan O’Brien play the OG 7 cast members to a tee. Each and every one of them embodies the mannerisms of those beloved cast members and is given a bit of time to shine on screen, allowing us to get to know them in some way shape or form - Cory Michael Smith and Dylan O’Brien being my personal favourites as Chevy Chase and Canadian Dan Aykroyd. I would say they get the most screen time of the cast and in the grand scheme of the story being told, it is understandable as they became the two most successful of that generation of SNL.