It has become one of television’s most successful shows.  It’s been on air for over 49 years, it’s helped launch the career of many famous comedians, it’s won 90 Emmy Awards (from 331 nominations), and it still draws 5 million viewers in the United States each week.  Saturday Night Live deserves its place in the annals of TV history.

As we learn from most breakout shows (“we had no idea it would become a hit”), Saturday Night Live had rocky beginnings.  NBC needed something to fill the midnight time slot and, instead of trotting out more Johnny Carson talk show reruns, they threw money and a bunch of young, little-known writers and humourists for a live sketch comedy program.  Many industry executives expected the show to be a short-lived flop.

The creation of Oscar nominated director Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air), Saturday Night recounts the chaotic 90 minutes in the lead up to the first episode on 11 October 1975.  I’ll describe it as a semi-fictionalised version of events.  Reitman interviewed many who were there to create an authentic record but to help make the story more cinematic, things that occurred weeks prior have been made to look like they all happened between 10pm and 11:30pm on that history-making night.

That makes the film a little messy.  It’s arguably impossible to condense all the subplots (80 actors have speaking lines) into a 109-minute running time.  A talent co-ordinator has a drug-related freak out, Chevy Chase gets touted as a future talk show host, John Belushi won’t sign his employment contract, and a kid outside the building tries to lure a studio audience, and Milton Berle is sleazily whipping out his giant penis.

Everything happens so quickly that it’s hard to keep up or care in any meaningful way.  As an example, what was behind John Belushi’s weird behaviour?  Further, the screenplay gets bogged down with plot points that aren’t interesting.  Did we need all the references to the married Rosie Shuster and what surname she would use in the credits?  How many times do we need to hear from Jim Henson worried about his lack of script pages?

It’s not all bad though.  There’s a central character who creates a narrative through-line for everyone else to hang off – 22-year-old Gabriel LaBelle (The Fabelmans) plays producer Lorne Michaels.  He too comes with unnecessary repetitiveness (why does he need to be asked so many times what the show is about?) but still does a terrific job capturing the excitement and stress that came with co-ordinating the problematic first episode.

A few jokes hit the mark (the naïve censor, the llama) and others miss (the sketches feel dated) but there’s enough on offer with Saturday Night, in terms of laughs and a history lesson, to recommend a watch.