A more fitting title of this novelty biopic would be ONCE UPON A TIME IN
THE BEGINNING OF SATURDAY NIGHT with all the seemingly deliberate
fiction added... And the original working title was SNL 1975
except that Howard Cossell owned the name SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE for his
failed prime time comedy/variety show...
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
