Richard Crouse

SYNOPSIS: In “Saturday Night,” a new show business biography from director Jason Reitman, and now playing in theatres, tensions run high as producer Lorne Michaels and his not ready for prime-time gang of young comedians count down the minutes until the first broadcast of “Saturday Night Live” on Oct. 11, 1975.

CAST: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Lamorne Morris, Kim Matula, Finn Wolfhard, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Kaia Gerber, Tommy Dewey, Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, and J. K. Simmons. Directed by Jason Reitman.

REVIEW: “Saturday Night” captures the anxiety, the humor and the sheer nerve it took to get the first episode of “SNL” off the ground. Chaos reigns for much of the movie’s run time as producer Lorne Michaels attempts to wrangle an unruly cast, a drug addled host (a terrific Matthew Rhys as George Carlin), indecision and a network executive (Willem Dafoe) who may, or may not, order a Johnny Carson rerun to air instead of Michaels’s disorganized counterculture circus.

Reitman captures the behind-the-scenes action with a restless camera that never seems to stop moving, rat-a-tat-tat Arron Sorkin style fast talking dialogue and meticulous recreations of the iconic “SNL” set and sketches.

Reitman’s biggest storytelling accomplishment, however, may be that he imbues the film with a sense that everything may come crashing down at any second. We know it won’t, of course—“SNL” celebrates 50 seasons this year—but the threat of imminent collapse hangs over frame.

Michaels’s high wire act is the film’s engine, but it’s the insights into the cast that provide the key to deciphering what made the original 1975 cast so compelling.

Cory Michael Smith captures “SNL’s” first superstar Chevy Chase’s comic ability, fueled by talent, ego and bluster. Dylan O’Brien’s take on Dan Aykroyd is eerily accurate vocally and physically, and Matt Wood puts John Belushi’s troubled genius routine front and centre. Lamorne Morris plays Garrett Morris, the lone Black performer in the original cast, as a searcher, looking for purpose in a show that appears to be rudderless.

The women in the boy’s club, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, and Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, are given less to do, but each has a moment amid the chaos. Hunt gets Radner’s buoyant, sunshiny personality, Fairn is all eagerness as Newman and Curtain’s one-on-one backstage chat with Morris is a funny, yet poignant, conversation about her place in this cast. Cumulatively, they are at their best in a recreation of a sketch where the women, as construction workers, ogle and objectify Aykroyd.

The large ensemble cast is rounded out by a scene-stealing J.K. Simmons as Hollywood legend Milton Berle and “Succession’s” Nicholas Braun in the dual roles of Andy Kaufman and Muppet master Jim Henson.

The film’s soul comes courtesy of the pairing of Gabriel LaBelle and Rachel Sennott as Michaels and his wife and “SNL” writer, Rosie Shuster. “We may be married,” she says, “but I’m not your wife,” and it is their bond, in whatever form it takes, that grounds Michaels as everything appears to spin out of control.

“Saturday Night” is a love letter to show business. It’s high energy nostalgic fun, told in almost real time, that captures the tenacity of the creative mind and the beginnings of a cultural institution.