My World Of Flops: Saturday Night

Saturday Night gave SNL fans just what they were all clamoring for: A worshipful biopic of bossman Lorne Michaels.

By Nathan Rabin | March 21, 2025 | 10:00am

Photo: Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images (Getty)

Film Features my world of flops

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were financial flops, critical failures, or lack a substantial cult following.

Jason Reitman was born into privilege and power. His daddy, Ivan Reitman, directed Ghostbusters. He consequently was a god among men. Can you imagine how cool everybody would think you were if your daddy directed Ghostbusters? The other kids would reek of jealousy if they thought Bill Murray might show up at your birthday party. You could get to know Slimer as a real phantasm, with real feelings and a complex interior life, not just a movie character.

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Jason started to reap the rewards of his daddy directing Ghostbusters before he was Bar Mitzvah age. He had bit parts in 1988’s Twins, 1989’s Ghostbusters II, 1990’s Kindergarten Cop, and 1997’s Father’s Day. Did Jason Reitman’s daddy directing those films play a role in him getting roles? I don’t want to be cynical, but it probably did. But he ultimately did not want to act. He didn’t want a career in front of the camera. He wanted to direct, write, and produce. And he got a chance to direct at a precocious age, helming the well-received 2005 ad world satire Thank You For Smoking while still in his late twenties. Homeskillet had not yet reached 30 when he directed what proved to be his breakout film, 2007’s Oscar-festooned Juno.

When Juno made Reitman a major director, and not just someone whose daddy directed Ghostbusters, he was around the same age his daddy was when he made the leap from Canuck producer of underground sensations like the early David Cronenberg directorial effort Shivers to mainstream superstar producer of the Saturday Night Live-derived 1978 smash Animal House. That next year, Jason’s daddy pivoted to director of another Saturday Night Live-connected hit, 1979’s Meatballs, before going on to direct 1981’s Stripes and 1984’s Ghostbusters. The elder and younger Reitmans were both around 30 when they made their big, iconic breakthroughs. Lorne Michaels was 30 when Saturday Night Live began its endless, epic, and occasionally funny existence. So it is unsurprising that Jason Reitman makes Lorne Michaels—the haughty, pragmatic patriarch of a wild and unruly brood of writers and performers—the focus and hero of Saturday Night, rather than the people in front of the camera who actually made America laugh.

Saturday Night is pro-boss propaganda from someone who understandably identified more with the preternaturally capable and resourceful Boy Wonder behind the scenes than wildman John Belushi or violently verbose Prince of Darkness Michael O’Donoghue. When Saturday Night was released, its nearly superhuman hero had gone from being a young upstart to the embodiment of the comedy establishment. He has 21 Emmys and 106 nominations. He’s the most nominated figure in Emmy history. You do not earn that distinction without the mainstream aggressively approving of your life’s work.

Reitman first made his name as the sure-handed director of glibly clever comedies, but over the past half decade, Reitman has also embraced the mainstream, leaning all the way into being the guy whose daddy directed Ghostbusters. After an evil brigade of Satanic witches tried to steal the franchise away from the loyal, hardworking, patriotic, not at all sexist, thin-skinned, or immature fans with 2016’s Ghostbusters, Reitman triumphantly returned the series to its fans with 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The legacy sequel gave audiences what they desperately craved: Bill Murray putting on the old costume and sleepwalking through a supporting role in exchange for an obscene payday. Ghostbusters: Afterlife and its Reitman-written 2024 follow-up Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire treated the movies Jason’s daddy directed like sacred texts.

The same is true, unfortunately, of 2024’s Saturday Night, a frenetic account of the 90 or so minutes leading up to the debut of what was then called Saturday Night but that would rise to fame as Saturday Night Live. Reitman depicts the first episode of Saturday Night Live as better and more important than all of Shakespeare’s plays combined.

While the rest of the world agrees that Saturday Night Live’s early years have been mythologized to such an extent that they can’t possibly live up to the hype, Reitman feels strongly otherwise. The second-generation director thinks we haven’t given Lorne Michaels, the staggering genius behind this most triumphant of wonders, enough credit. Saturday Night celebrates Lorne Michaels as an Irving Thalberg/Jason Reitman/Ivan Reitman-style genius who made the impossible happen for the stakeholders of the corporations he worked for.

Saturday Night argues unpersuasively that the universe can usefully be divided into two periods: pre-Saturday Night and post-Saturday Night Live. It doesn’t just see Michaels’ brainchild as something that defined a generation. Instead the film positions Saturday Night Live as a landmark that defined all of civilization.

But we know that Saturday Night is watered down because it’s rated R in part for “some drug use.” A biopic that was true to the historical record would instead be X-rated for “more drug use than any other film in history, including Scarface and lengthy documentaries about cocaine smuggling.” Saturday Night at least attempts to replicate the jittery cocaine rhythms of New Hollywood and early Saturday Night Live alike. Reitman the Younger uses handheld cameras, manic editing, and a score designed to get heartbeats racing to give the proceedings the feeling of a docudrama from the era it’s portraying.

And yes, Saturday Night Live’s endlessly mythologized beginning was dramatic and cinematic. It wasn’t dramatic and cinematic enough for the filmmakers, unfortunately, so they threw in a bunch of melodramatic crap that never happened, or happened years after the time depicted, or happened to other people. The film seems to be of the mindset that if something happened within the first four or five years to anyone even tangentially associated with Saturday Night Live, then it’s fair game.

For example, J.K. Simmons plays Milton Berle, a massive dick in more ways than one who’s shooting a variety show next door, who serves as a boorish example of a generation not hip, prescient, or intelligent enough to understand the genius of Michaels’ vision. The Fabelmans star Gabriel LaBelle plays Michaels as a hyper-confident fixer uniquely adept at navigating with practicality and guile the landmines that fill live television. That includes Simmons’ villainous Berle, who infamously hosted a disastrous episode of Saturday Night Live several long years after this takes place. He similarly did not have a variety show taping within spitting distance of Michaels’ 90-minute question mark. To add even more artificial drama and generational conflict, a nefarious Johnny Carson takes time out of his busy schedule being one of the most powerful, successful, and beloved entertainers in all of pop culture to try to bully Michaels and cut him down to size.

Chevy Chase apparently told Reitman that he “should be embarrassed” by his hagiography. Chase could very well be joking. It’s also possible that he objected to the film implying that his gorgeous girlfriend might have had Berle’s kosher footlong in her mouth the night he began his ascent to overnight superstardom.

Also disorienting is that Saturday Night is a slobs versus snobs comedy in which the slobs are represented primarily by Lorne fucking Michaels. Endlessly busy without being particularly engaging, it introduces more characters and subplots than it can handle, so it simplifies everything by focusing on Michaels. In doing so, it turns a group triumph into yet another veneration of an enterprising young man with a plan and a vision only he can understand.

Saturday Night reduces some of the greatest artists of all time, including Jim Henson, Andy Kaufman, and George Carlin, to background players in Lorne Michaels’ creation story as a super-powerful comedy titan. In the ironic tradition of these kinds of movies, Saturday Night is about an iconoclast who broke the mold and risked it all on a crazy dream…that fits snugly into the tight mold of worshipful biopics.

The timing of Saturday Night is also particularly unfortunate. It’s been less than six months since its release and the populace is reeling from the actions of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, two endlessly mythologized bosses who fancy themselves populist entertainers shaking up the establishment and a corrupt status quo.

Not coincidentally, in his role as perhaps the most powerful boss in comedy, Lorne Michaels invited both of these powerful men to spend a week as his guest to collaborate on an episode of his 90-minute comedy institution. Though Trump and Musk have been extremely, excessively, even obsessively vocal in their hatred of Saturday Night Live, they both said yes, and spent a wild week at 30 Rock collaborating with Lorne Michaels. Elon Musk and Donald Trump are now permanent parts of Saturday Night Live’s story, as both hosts of ratings bonanzas, as well as targets for satire and mockery. That does not speak well of Michaels or his motivations.

Saturday Night fatally misjudged the public mood and the emotions of moviegoers. It’s an excessively flattering depiction of a little capitalist king, made by an admiring pop culture prince at a time when people are sharpening guillotines.

Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success: Failure