Director: Kelly Makin
Cast: Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, Scott Thompson*
Have I Seen It Before: Never. I remember this hovering around announcements on HBO for several years. You miss the really good comedy stuff in that era, and something like this film just feels like a lot of gibberish.
I wasn’t a very hip kid, as it turns out. Given that I didn’t come back around to the sketch TV run from the troupe until I was in my 30s, so it turns out I’m not much of a hip adult, either.
Did I Like It: Sketch comedy in feature films can be a tough thing to make satisfying. Trying to do sketch comedy in a feature film, while also grating some sort of unifying plot onto the proceedings is harder still. So, I may be moving myself even further from the hip category when I say that the whole film doesn’t quite come together for me, and individual moments are similarly dragged down by trying to connect to one another.
Don’t get me wrong, I laughed. I didn’t feel ashamed or stupid for laughing at any of the things I did. It’s a good movie, and worth a watch, but I’d say watch the sketch show first. Build up that good will.
The one thing I was consistently struck by was Mark McKinney’s performance as Don Roritor. We’ve been subjected to a lot of Lorne Michaels impressions over the years. Mike Myers as Dr. Evil in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) and its sequels is a cartoon, and rightly so**. Gabriel LaBelle in Saturday Night (2024) manages to smooth out the more imitable traits of the man in pursuit of a human performance. McKinney, though, manages to harness—while still being quite funny—the frustration of what it must be like to have a conversation with Michaels, now that he has become the myth that created a whole night of the week.
*Don’t normally list five cast members, but this feels like a valid exception.
**Two thoughts here: First, Myers read his Canadian colleagues right and pilfering the basic structure of Roritor for Evil. Had he done it to an American, he’d have had a real problem. Another, there really should have been more Donald Pleasance in that character, aside from just the appearance.