Saturday Night (2024)

Director: Jason Reitman

Cast: Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt

Have I Seen it Before: I’ve heard all the stories before, if not quite in this combination. I’ve seen the documentaries, and I’ve read Live from New York*. I know all about everyone hating the Muppets, and Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) almost being a part of show one, and even Milton Berle’s (J.K. Simmons) penis*.

One might wonder why I watched a new release right in the middle of catching movies at a film festival. I may have really wanted to go see the 70th anniversary revival of Seven Samurai (1954), but as it turned out, so did everyone else at the festival. We had to make quick changes, and this was a pretty good consolation prize.

Did I Like It: That is all to say, I generally liked the film very much.

The casting is unassailably great. I struggle to find a weak link in the entire ensemble. Matt Wood is the embodiment of John Belushi, to the point where I wondered if they somehow resurrected him. Others may not be quite as spooky, but Cory Michael Smith’s channeling the soul of Chevy Chase, and Dylan O’Brien’s mastering of the Dan Aykroyd cadence are certainly highlights. I love any opportunity to see Lamorne Morris at work, and having him play Garrett Morris is maybe the only obvious note of casting in the whole affair, but all is forgiven when its a running race between him and Andy Kaufman (Nicholas Braun, who also plays perpetually put-upon Jim Henson) for which depiction I like the most. While Matthew Rhys’ performance as George Carlin (the first guest host of the program) is serviceable, the makeup job to make Rhys look like Carlin is more than worthy of some Academy attention in the spring.

The story’s breakneck pace guarantees that certain liberties are taken with the fall of 1975, but many, many of them can be forgiven. While the show existing in the first place as a byproduct of a Johnny Carson powerplay is true, it wasn’t like it went up to the last minute before they were going to decide to even air the show, but it feels right. The moments that ring less thematically true pile up in the film’s final act. Hunt is tragically underused as Gilda Radner (especially as he performance taps well into the manic sweetness that made Radner a star), chiefly musing with Belushi about how they might look back on this night in twenty years, when neither of them were going to make it that far. This, shortly after Lorne Michaels (LaBelle, little Sammy Fabelman no longer) hires longtime writer Alan Zweibel (Josh Brener) minutes before showtime. It’s a one-two punch of supreme based-on-a-true-story bullshit. If we had gotten to see Zweibel already a part of the writing staff, we could have seen the truly lovely friendship between him and Radner. It’s a huge missed opportunity for the movie.

*Although I am reading the recent revision. There’s probably some good stories in the last few years, not the least of which would include the absolutely lame horror of having certain politicians (you know who you are…) hosting in the new millennium.

**In the movie, he shows it to Chevy, but I’m almost sure he actually showed it to one of the writers, probably Zweibel. Thematically, it somehow feels right to show it to Chase.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Director: Jason Reitman

Cast: Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, McKenna Grace, Paul Rudd

Have I Seen it Before: Well… We’ll get to that.

Did I Like It: As I fully expected, I would be remiss to not spend a little bit of time in this review talking about Ghostbusters (2016). That movie was perfectly fine and more than a little funny. Sure, it looks like it was definitely filmed in front of a green screen for large stretches, instead of any New York I might recognize. I’ve never understood why that film had to be a total reboot. By 2016, Ghostbusters could have been a nationwide franchise, and that could have been the story of one of those franchisees with very little changed*. I saw Answer the Call in theaters twice. I bought it on Blu Ray. I’ve bought ever comic book that featured those characters. We—and by we, I mean America—did Ghostbusters (2016) dirty. It stinks that the movie became a political cause at a time when nearly every political cause only served to nauseate, and there was never a way a Ghostbusters film was going to be any fun when it was an issue we all had to take sides on. We now have twice as many Ghostbusters films as we did just over five years ago, and you all nearly ruined it.

Now, that I have taken up for the maligned, I feel like I can say that I looked forward to this film with more than a moderate amount of anticipation. The notion of a sequel to Ghostbusters II (1989) progressively felt like a shaky idea, especially after the death of Harold Ramis in 2014. But this film largely makes a case for itself in ways with which any other version of a direct continuation would have struggled. Ramis is given his hero’s sendoff, and Egon Spengler is a very real part of the movie. The remaining Ghostbusters appear sparingly, which is about right. I always said I never really wanted a Ghostbusters III, I was always more interested in a trailer, and that’s about the amount—aside from post-credits scenes—we get. The new characters are charming, and I feel sad for the five-year-old me who never got to see the Ghostbusters descend on Oklahoma. The film is fun, I’ll buy it on Blu Ray just as soon as it is available, and will delightfully consume any additional stories featuring the new characters, should they be in another movie or some other kind of ancillary material.

Here’s the problem: the film threatens to completely fall apart when it is desperate to recreate moments from the first film. Not characters and cast, mind you, actual scenes. Making Gozer the villain of the piece again, we see more comedies of error about Keymasters and Gatekeepers, that the whole thing almost, kind of, veers dangerously close to Gus Van Sant’s Psycho (1998) territory. I don’t give two shits about Gozer the Gozerian, Ivo Shandor, Zuul, or the rest. They should have gone with something new. That’s one more thing the last Ghostbusters film got right, and well… also got wrong in a post credits sequence, now that I’m thinking about it.

*That change could have also allowed them to not be essentially retconned out of existence with this entry, which would have made all the correct people furious all over again. But I digress, and that’s why that thought is footnote.

The Front Runner (2018)

Director: Jason Reitman

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons, Alfred Molina

Have I Seen it Before: No, but there are times when I feel like I lived it.

Did I Like It: I wanted to. At least we got that pretty rad poster of Hart’s campaign bus driving off a cliff. Of course, that is not the poster I include in this post, wherein Hugh Jackman has the look of a man who has just sharted, but I digress.

A political film is going to have a hard time avoiding making a political point about the time they are released. Even All The President’s Men sheds light (at the time of its release) about recent events. This movie certainly can’t make any claim to the latter goal, as most people would view the 1988 election, the Democratic Primary that year, and Gary Hart himself as a footnote in political history. 

When the film tries to make its statement about the here and now, things get truly muddled, indeed. Is it a #metoo commentary, wherein the shoddy treatment of Donna Rice (Sara Paxton) by the powerful yet clueless Hart (Jackman)? Maybe. There are certainly scenes that would approach that kind of a statement. Are we supposed to look down on the morally compromised journalists as they make their slow embrace of tabloid methods? Again, maybe, but at this particular moment in history, lay off journalists, man, they’re having a rough enough time as it is. Are we supposed to take Hart’s side and lament that this jungle environment ensures that the best and brightest won’t take to public life? Again, maybe, but the point feels like weak sauce in a world that has pointedly moved on from heralding Bill Clinton as any kind of mistreated hero.

I just wish the movie would pick a lane, and that said lane wouldn’t be quite as tone deaf.

It should also bear mentioning that I may be among the worst audiences for a political film, as I keep trying to pick apart the history. Several minor anachronisms run throughout, but the most glaring example comes from right at the beginning. The opening scene takes place at the height of the 1984 Democratic National Convention, with Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro ascending to their eventual status as America’s greatest sacrificial lambs. Hart soberly assesses Mondale’s chances in the fall, and resolves that he will be the one to bring the Democratic Party back from the brink on the next go around. 

We cut to nearly a year before the Iowa caucuses, and the title on screen says “Four Years Later.” It wasn’t four years later. It was barely three years later. That’s just math, Jason Reitman. It doesn’t take a lot to jar me out of believing a political narrative, but even that is pretty egregious.

Shut up, Mac? Yeah, you bet. I’ll get right on that.