Saturday Night
Sony Pictures Releasing | Release Date: September 27, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
60
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 46 Critic Reviews
Positive:
25
Mixed:
16
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyMaureen Lee LenkerSep 4, 2024
It's a wildly entertaining love letter to a night of television that marked a cultural watershed. Read full review
90
SlashfilmEthan AndertonSep 11, 2024
Like any given episode of "SNL," Jason Reitman's "Saturday Night" is not perfect; there are highs and lows, and the cast just might be too big to adequately hit all the finer points in a satisfying way. But the outcome is an ultimately satisfying showbiz romp with equal parts comedy and drama that is full of effervescent life, outstanding performances, and a wealth of laugh-out-loud moments. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 1, 2024
Now, just one year shy of the pop phenom’s 50th anniversary, director Jason Reitman gives back, turning an oral history of the very first episode into a rowdy, delectably profane backstage homage. Read full review
88
USA TodayBrian TruittOct 9, 2024
Instead of slowing down, you get used to its speedy pace, enough to sit back in awe of the indisputable acting talent – familiar names and fresh faces alike – Reitman’s pulled together to revisit a TV miracle. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 2, 2024
Even with a coked-up George Carlin (a spot-on Matthew Rhys) and the ubiquity of marijuana and the hard-R language, “Saturday Night” is a smooth and polished gem — a far cry from the spirt of raw anarchy permeating the birth of the series. Read full review
83
Original-CinJim SlotekOct 1, 2024
Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night is a representation of 90 eventful minutes of TV history as tightly packed narratively as a neutron star. It is about that tightly wound as well. For a movie about the debut of Saturday Night Live, the show that changed comedy, the experience is more anxiety than humour. Read full review
83
ConsequenceLiz Shannon MillerSep 24, 2024
Because that’s ultimately what Reitman succeeds at with Saturday Night — capturing the allure that’s kept audiences tuning in for what will be 50 seasons, come September 28th, 2024. The sense that something magical is going on in a little studio called 8H. No one knows what will happen. But they want to find out. Read full review
83
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodSep 1, 2024
Beyond Reitman and Keenan’s tight screenplay and a fantastic recreation of Studio 8H from production designer Jess Gonchor, the movie would not fly without an ensemble that may end up being legendary in its own right. Read full review
80
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 10, 2024
At its best, the film demonstrates a showbiz truism: It takes a lot of hard work to make something look easy. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithOct 3, 2024
This kinetic, documentary-style, fly-on-the-wall and in-the-halls tale proves that in the hands of capable dramatists the rack of suspense can be tightened to an almost unbearable degree even when the outcome is known. Read full review
80
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaSep 27, 2024
With a cast that takes wildly different approaches to characters we already know from film and TV, and a camera that never slows down, Saturday Night is chaotic in wildly enjoyable ways. The lead-up to the historic premiere of SNL plays like an extended 90-minute climax. Read full review
80
LooperAudrey FoxSep 25, 2024
As a frenetic, chaotic glimpse at the making of a doomed-to-fail sketch comedy series that has somehow lasted for 50 years, Saturday Night is a blast. Read full review
80
ColliderRoss BonaimeSep 13, 2024
Saturday Night is a loving celebration of SNL that captures the spirit of trying to put on a live comedy show every week. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 1, 2024
Saturday Night might not be factually accurate, but it feels spiritually true. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 15, 2024
What we have here is enjoyable, if somewhat scattershot, and at least as entertaining as what’s airing most Saturday nights at 11:30 pm. Read full review
75
The Film VerdictAlonso DuraldeOct 11, 2024
With so many potential crises underfoot, Saturday Night manages to pass the Apollo 13 sniff-test of historical dramas: we know everything’s going to come out all right, but the film nonetheless generates enough suspense to make us think that it might not. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 11, 2024
Saturday Night won’t be to every generation’s taste. The look-alike cast is generally good, if hardly substitutes for “the real thing” in some cases. But if you were “there,” or at least caught the show in those birthing years, it’s a lot of fun, with or without the stimulants. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonOct 9, 2024
Reitman handles the ensemble cast with Robert Altman-esque assurance. “Saturday Night” is bursting with talent and ideas, is sometimes funny, sometimes groan-worthy, sometimes full of it — and even, at times, inspired. In other words, much like a typical episode of “Saturday Night Live.” Read full review
75
Washington PostTy BurrOct 2, 2024
Saturday Night is as entertaining as a movie can be that has no genuine point beyond nostalgia. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJake CoyleSep 27, 2024
This “Saturday Night” may have a legacy of its own; a lot of this cast, I suspect, will be around for a long time. And, ultimately, when the show finally comes together, it’s galvanizing. Read full review
75
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiSep 11, 2024
Since the characters barely get a chance to catch their breath, let alone say their piece, we don’t learn much about them beyond familiar traits. However, Reitman’s aim isn’t to seriously illuminate that fateful night so much as to energetically add to showbiz mythology. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneDavid FearSep 1, 2024
It’s all admittedly funny and nerve-jangling, with the comedians mugging and the pressure mounting and the chances of Michaels’ dream of a show “made for the generation who grew up on TV, by the generation who grew up on TV” actually airing slipping away minute by ticked-off minute. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesOct 10, 2024
If the cast blurs together, the expert costume and production design, filmed in lusciously retro 16mm, give the eye plenty to enjoy. Read full review
63
ObserverOliver JonesOct 8, 2024
The nostalgia is so thick in Saturday Night, Jason Reitman’s furiously busy paean to the nascent days of SNL, so unrelenting and potent, that eventually it unmoors from the film and begins swallowing its characters whole, like the titular alien in Steve McQueen’s The Blob. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comMonica CastilloSep 16, 2024
Despite its shortcomings, “Saturday Night” works as a crowd pleaser for those who watched Chevy Chase take command of the Weekend Update desk, John Belushi tear up a stage with his intensity, or Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner crack up the audience with their absurd characters. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeFeb 3, 2025
For all the talk of gamechanging comedy genius, Saturday Night ultimately plays it rather safe: it’s closer to a Noises Off-style romp transposed to a TV studio than the blast off of a cultural revolution. Read full review
60
NMEJordan BassettJan 31, 2025
The film lacks narrative drive and genuine comedy, then. As it barrels towards its inevitable conclusion, though, a funny thing happens. Out of the chaos emerges a rather inspiring ode to making it up as you go along, living in the moment, saying ‘yes’ and hoping for the best. Read full review
60
EmpireNick de SemlyenJan 28, 2025
The founding of a comedy institution shot as a madcap thriller, Saturday Night glides over the surface rather than drilling deep, but it’s largely a hell of a fun 109 minutes. Read full review
60
ScreenCrushMatt SingerOct 10, 2024
Reitman clearly made this film from a place of love and admiration for the institution of SNL and the people, then and now, who produce it. He might get the facts wrong at times; what he gets right is the feeling that every fan who grows up watching SNL imagines the show is like behind the scenes — giddy and chaotic and brimming with passionate creativity. Read full review
60
Time OutElizabeth WeitzmanOct 4, 2024
An experienced SNL staff writer might have infused the script’s basic nostalgia with deeper knowledge. But when Reitman does take chances, it’s an exhilarating success. Read full review
60
ABC NewsPeter TraversSep 27, 2024
Jason Reitman energetically tracks the lead-up to the first episode of SNL in 1975, but the result is only fitfully funny, leaving the cast struggling to register. Best in show are Dylan O'Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase and Nicholas Braun in a surprise dual role. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisSep 26, 2024
Saturday Night is a movie made by fans, but because Reitman assumes that his viewers are fans, too, and because he’s racing against the clock, he gestures at instead of digging into the show, its humor and history. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterStephen FarberSep 1, 2024
This film, so fresh and enterprising at many moments, ultimately disappoints. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerSep 25, 2024
It’s more akin to speed-reading from the SNL memoir library than experiencing the thrilling unevenness—the captivating try-whatever stupidity—of the actual live show. It’s inconsequential in all the wrong places. Read full review
50
We Got This CoveredCharlotte SimmonsOct 11, 2024
Saturday Night plays with the sharp erraticism of an improv comedian's neurons, but it quite simply doesn't believe in itself the way Lorne did about the film's subject. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 3, 2024
In 2024 a movie about a live-TV countdown to destiny, once upon a time in ’75, needs more than moderately skillful reverence, and reaction shots of people cracking up at colleagues, to show us what it might’ve been like to be there. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleSep 27, 2024
In Jason Reitman’s overstuffed, adrenalized Saturday Night, a dramatization of the windup to that fateful first broadcast, you don’t feel the buzzy air of revolution so much as hear the voice of present-day legacy curation getting in the way. Read full review
49
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 30, 2024
This is a movie that so badly wants to be as cool as its source material that it trips over itself, in backward Chevy Chase style, into something so old-fashioned and dully familiar that no amount of retro sheen can boost its cool bona fides. Read full review
42
The Film StageEthan VestbySep 11, 2024
The issue is that the mania never builds: a few crashing stage lights and the personalities surrounding Lorne never are convincingly erratic enough. There’s no real tension, and certainly nothing in the way of feature-justifying stakes. Read full review
42
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 1, 2024
Forget in-jokes or fan service, this is a movie so long on cos-play (much of it brilliant) and short on character development (none of it interesting) that it requires a casual knowledge of the show’s lore to understand, let alone to enjoy. Read full review
40
Screen RantFerdosa AbdiSep 19, 2024
This particular narrative is a sound idea but for a documentary instead. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineDerek SmithSep 25, 2024
There’s a certain pleasure in basking in the anarchic behavior of the SNL cast as depicted in Saturday Night, but it’s rendered hollow by the film’s often grating mythologizing of them, which includes trying to turn the 90 minutes before the first episode into a frenetic comedy of Safdie-esque proportions. Read full review
30
Little White LiesMark AschJan 30, 2025
The film is fan fiction about real-life celebrities. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonOct 8, 2024
Despite the frenetic pace, “Saturday Night” falls flat and fails to raise one goose pimple. Read full review
20
The GuardianPeter BradshawJan 30, 2025
There’s an odd, disconcerting tone of solemnity to this slice of cultural history. Read full review
20
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 12, 2024
There’s never the satisfying pleasure of problems being solved – just people frantically raising them and things magically coming together, a film that should be about process that doesn’t seem particularly interested in it. Read full review
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