'Saturday Night' review: Loving recreation of iconic TV moment

"He’s better than Brando. More important, even. He’ll be studied," Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) says in "Saturday Night." The year is 1975, the day is Oct. 11, and the show we’ll come to know as "SNL" is about to go on for the very first time. Michaels, its producer, is singing the praises of John Belushi, of course, the self-destructive comic whose early death would turn him into a legend. It’s almost as if Michaels can see the future.

That sense of clairvoyance permeates just about every frame of "Saturday Night." At its best, Jason Reitman’s comedy-drama is a loving recreation of the chaos, lunacy, chemistry (comedic and otherwise) and sheer determination that went into mounting an unpredictable, countercultural sketch-comedy show. It also, however, keeps telling us what a historic moment we’re watching: a show that would flout television’s rules, shock the squares and (like all revolutions) eventually become an institution. All true, but the movie often forgets a primary rule of improv: Stay in the moment.

To be fair, Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan have a lot to pack in. There’s the show’s Not Ready for Prime Time Players, many of whom could support a biopic of their own. (George Coe, always the forgotten member, gets forgotten again.) There’s the generational divide between the shaggy-haired youngsters and the NBC suits, represented by Willem Dafoe as David Tebet, the network’s shrewdest networker. There’s the famous host, George Carlin (Matthew Rhys), plus the leftfield comedian Andy Kaufman, the Muppeteer Jim Henson (both played by "Succession's" Nicholas Braun) and the musical guests (Naomi McPherson plays Janis Ian; Jon Batiste is Billy Preston). Reitman’s solution is to scoop it all up with long shots that travel through Studio 8H — shades of 2014’s single-take "Birdman" — but that means we don’t spend much quality time with the characters.

Casting mostly unknowns to play actors who were also relatively unknown is a nice touch, but the results are mixed. Corey Michael Smith perfectly captures Chevy Chase’s odd combination of lady killer and pratfaller, Dylan O’Brien nails Dan Aykroyd’s machine-gun delivery and Ella Hunt is identifiable as Gilda Radner even without an introduction from announcer Don Pardo (Brian Welch). Lamorne Morris plays a soul-searching Garrett Morris (no relation), the show’s only Black member, but the script weirdly ducks that issue. Even the best turns, though, never rise above impersonations. Most disappointingly, Belushi (Matt Wolf) is reduced to a pair of ever-wiggling eyebrows.

For the real story of "Saturday Night Live," James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales' 2015 oral history "Live from New York" is still your best bet. But Reitman’s movie also has its charms. Just hearing the immortal line that would launch nearly every episode of the show for 50 seasons — you remember who said it first, don’t you? — is enough to give you a thrill.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman