Saturday Night's Chaotic SNL Origin Story Gets Rave Reviews After Telluride Premiere

This year, "Saturday Night Live" wrapped up its 49th season and held on to the title of TV's top-rated comedy for a fifth year running. But back when the show first premiered — at 11:30pm on October 11, 1975 — it was shaping up to be a total disaster. As the poster for "Saturday Night," Jason Reitman's upcoming account of that fateful night, neatly summarizes: 

"The writers are inebriated. The set is on fire. The sound system is wrecked. The actors are physically assaulting each other. The crew is in open revolt. They have 90 minutes to figure it all out or the network is pulling the plug."

The first episode of "Saturday Night" did ultimately make it to air, but was a bit of a mixed bag according to reviewers at the time. The movie about the making of that first episode, however, was a massive crowd-pleaser for the audience at its Telluride Film Festival premiere. We can expect a bigger flurry of reviews when "Saturday Night" screens at Toronto International Film Festival in a couple of weeks, but the early forecast is looking very good.

Variety writer Tomris Laffly wrote in the immediate aftermath that "Saturday Night" had "played like gangbusters" to its Telluride audience. She describes the film as "wonderful" and the overall experience as "the most joy I felt in the last few days." Variety's official review from Peter Debruge is similarly effusive, writing that the film is packed with "enough anxiety ... to power New York City." According to Next Best Picture's Matt Neglia, it "blew the roof off Telluride."

The lion's share of praise for "Saturday" has been directed towards the movie's ensemble cast, led by "The Fabelmans" star Gabriel LaBelle as a fresh-faced Lorne Michaels, the creator of "Saturday Night Live" who continues to produce it almost 50 years later. The Playlist critic Gregory Ellwood says that Dylan O'Brien ("Teen Wolf," "The Maze Runner") is "a revelation" as the young Dan Aykroyd, and the Hollywood Reporter's more mixed review also compliments O'Brien's "vivid interpretation" of the comedy legend. It sounds like we're in for an amazing cameo appearance from J.K. Simmons as comedian Milton Berle, which has been called out by many as a highlight of the movie.

"Saturday Night" is 96 minutes long (roughly the same runtime as an episode of "Saturday Night Live") and this has earned it some love as well. Reactions indicate that keeping things tight allows the movie to keep up its intensity and momentum, helped by "Saturday Night" essentially taking place in real time: starting at 10 p.m. with a clock ticking down to the start of the start of the show (or, potentially, its cancellation and replacement with a rerun of Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show") at 11:30. Variety's senior awards editor Clayton Davis writes that the movie "sizzles for 96 minutes," and Deadline's rave review notes that, thanks to the ever-present threat that the show won't go on, "this isn't just a comedy, it is a suspense thriller too."

Of course, it's important to take first reactions with a pinch of salt. The experience of a movie can definitely be heightened by the energy of the audience, and there's bound to be a lot of of anticipation at a world premiere. General audiences will get their chance to weigh in on "Saturday Night" when it hits theaters on October 11, 2024 — 49 years to the day after the events of the movie took place.