Which is how Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtain, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner and Garrett Morris became the NOT ready for prime time players.... which the cast members are STILL called, and all because a sportscaster made a bad comedy show on prime time... As everyone knows, the original cast are the best... or at least the most classic and endearing... and what this movie does is take PT Anderson's multi-layered Magnolia route funneled through that movie's muse in Robert Altman's quirky ensembles Nashville and Short Cuts... And a maddened running-around it is, in real time no less, of the cast and crew preparing for the first episode of the series... Meanwhile, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase and John Belushi look fantastic, and their acting is pretty good, going just a step beyond imitation... After all, it's not easy portraying a semi-modern actor (or actress) who would also star in classic movies... So basically, you have to imagine the Chevy Chase actor in Fletch, the Dan actor in Ghostbusters, the John Belushi actor in... Anyway, you get the point: but the main problem here are some of the hangups that either didn't exist or are overly exaggerated...
Garrett Morris had a problem with how he was stereotyped AFTER the show went of the air... It's doubtful he would have the same gripes BEFORE becoming famous... Also, Morris was one of the few actual actors when the show began, appearing in CAR WASH and COOLEY HIGH before the rest of them were given their own vehicles... Basically, Morris was the genuine character-actor of the show, and sadly, they turn him into an anachronism of modern politically-correct sensibilities... But he's not in the movie much, and either are the women (replaced with Lorne Michael's writer wife, who no one really knows or cares about)... And unlike some of the guys, the girls don't look anything like the originals (Jane Curtain was NOT a sexy bombshell while Newman and Radner are practically nonexistent)...
And back to the rudimentary ONCE UPON A TIME example: director Jason Reitman does to Jim Henson what Quentin Tarantino did to Bruce Lee: making him look like a dimwitted fool when he was actually very helpful and downright brilliant... Okay, so his Muppets didn't fit a late night show that was basically a grungy American barroom's version of Monty Python... more weird in its origins than outright hilarious... but that doesn't mean he would act like a total buffoon...
Andy Kaufman, meanwhile, was an offbeat guy but it's doubtful he acted like Latka Gravis from Taxi, three years before the show came out... Yes, he created the Foreign guy before, but it's doubtful he spoke that way backstage... But since the actor looks nothing like him, they probably just wanted people familiar with Taxi to know who he was in the first place... And why on earth would Milton Berle be in this movie? Just to get the otherwise great actor JK Simmons a chance to chew scenery and waste precious time? And by the third act, too much time's wasted on all the wrong characters... Berle hosted a later infamous episode that even the all-around-nice-guy and show creator Lorne Michaels has destroyed from the archives... and Michaels is one of the better characters/adaptions here...
Through Lorne we have an effective pawn to channel all the madness through... It's just too bad that that madness is so overwhelmingly hit and miss... There are some involving energetic scenes one minute, and dark dramatic brooding scenes that follow, killing any kind of character-developed momentum that would make SATURDAY NIGHT more than a smug biopic geared for mega-fan baby boomers or generation Xers... Which, thankfully, unlike the National Lampoon cable biopic A Futile and Stupid Gesture (and particularly when Michael O'Donoghue tries too hard to be condescending towards any non-hippies), this NIGHT isn't as smug as it could have been... And sometimes there's some real heart beating in here, it just needed to be a lot more steady (and meaningful) throughout. Rates: **1/2
