Jason Reitman's look at the 90 minutes before the broadcast of the first episode of Saturday Night Live is okay. It's a breezy Hollywood film that shows the technical wizardry of the filmmakers who keep things moving at a frantic pace.
The problem is the film moves way too fast. In a weird way this is a really just a of series of fast blackouts of moments from the evening rather than the story of the rehearsal. It moves so fast that things are breezed over and left out like the huge number of characters who are such nonentities that they have to introduce everyone by name . Why many of the characters are important is never explained and unless you are a student of the early days of the show most of them are going to make you wonder why they bothered.
The film also contains a series of conversations that can't be remotely accurate. Characters and sketches from later seasons are referenced, at most other conversations are just exposition to move things along or to get a laugh. It's trying to tell everything within the bullshit conceit of it being in real time. This would have been better as two plus hour film that put everyone and everything in context. I wanted to know so much more that wasn't covered.
I'm coming late to the game so I didn't discover the film in it's initial run which probably hurt it in my eyes because I ended up seeing the film after the other behind the scenes of a TV broadcast movie SEPTEMBER 5, which does more in its 90 minutes than this film does in a similar amount of time.
Worth a look, because it is kind of funny, but you don't need to search it out.
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