“Live from New York, it’s the Saturday Night Movie Review”

!SPOILERS AHEAD! The SNL movie, that many superfan struggled to watch

By: Ryann Sniadecki 

This year, Saturday Night Live (SNL) is celebrating its 50^th season. SNL, which is a late-night live sketch comedy show that airs on NBC, The National Broadcasting Company. With SNL celebrating its 50^th season a movie was created and released that shows what it was like on the first episode and season of SNL, at the time called NBC’s Saturday Night.

The movie, “Saturday Night” was first released to only a few theaters, in the U.S., on September 27, 2024, almost a month later, on October 11, 2024, Sony Pictures released the movie worldwide. The “finale” release of the movie was when it became available on Netflix on September 25, 2025. With these three different release dates, many people would think that the movie would be talked about more, but that seems to be false.

What is Saturday Night About?

Saturday Night, directed by Jason Reitman depicts the chaotic 90 minutes before the airing of the first SNL episode on October 11, 1975. Reitman told Time Magazine that his goal for the movie was to “…make you feel what it feels like when you’re on the ground in 8H moments before, how it feels like there’s no possible way the show is going to make it to air because everything’s happening so last second.”. This feeling is possibly one reason why many people didn’t like the movie.

The Guardian even made a comment about this feeling in their review of the movie, saying “The story of the first episode of Saturday Night Live is an exhaustingly frantic, dull dramedy that even the show’s biggest superfan would struggle to watch”. The Guardian even rated the film 1/5 stars.

The Problem and Reviews

I, like many, didn’t know about the movie’s release until it became available on Netflix. As well as not knowing about the release of the movie it seemed to only have one Golden Globe nomination. Although it didn’t win its nomination for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, actor Gabriel LaBelle, who portrays Lorne Michaels the creator and producer of SNL. This loss wasn’t the only downfall of the film. According to ScreenCrush the movie “…is not what the production of the first SNL was like.” This could be a reason why many superfans couldn’t get through the movie.

The fact that they didn’t show the “real” events and focused on the chaotic aspect of that fateful night, leaving a lot of movie goers and SNL fans confused and asking questions. I was one of those fans. From the start it was hard to tell who were the main characters, due to the chaoticness and how many actors and actresses were introduced at once or one right after the other. 

Another question fans had was if any of this stuff actually happened? According to the filmmakers, they interviewed almost everyone who was involved from Lorne Michaels to the guest stars, who are still alive.

Final Thoughts

Although the movie underperformed, only making $9.8 million USD, it’s 78% Fresh on Rotten Tomato, shows that although many people couldn’t get through the movie they did enjoy it. 

In my opinion, out of 5 stars, I would rate Saturday Night a 3.5/5 stars. The reason I rate it 3.5 stars is because, as an SNL fan, I had a hard time figuring out who was who. I also found it a very chaotic movie, yes this was the permiss to show the chaoticness of the first episode of the show but I feel like by jumping right into the chaos it was challenging to follow the movie. But I did enjoy how in the moments of chaos there were “calm” scenes, which really helped the movie. 

If you’re an SNL fan or a movie buff, I recommend watching Saturday Night, which is available on Netflix. Within the cast there are many actors and actresses that you may know such as; Dylan O’Brien, Finn Wolfhard, and Willem DaFoe, to name a few. For the SNL fans there are some familiar faces like Bowen Yang and Sarah Sherman, to name a few.   

For more information about who plays who in Saturday Night check out “A Who’s Who of the Famous Faces in Saturday Night” by Times Magazine. [https://time.com/7024579/saturday-night-movie-cast-real-people/]