It’s the mid-1970s, and a flipbook of Watergate, Vietnam, and rising counterculture make everything old in America feel broken, and everything new feel scary as hell. And now, yet another certainty is about to crack. Because in 90 minutes’ time, live, from New York, it’s Saturday Night.

SATURDAY NIGHT dives headfirst into the frenzied hour-and-a-half before a clutch of unknown, untrained, unruly young comedians took over network television and transformed the culture. Saturday Night Live would go on to become the late-night institution that brought John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and later Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, and others to our screens. But tonight, it’s barely contained madness backstage, with Canadian Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle, The Fabelmans, TIFF ’22) desperately trying to channel the chaos towards a vision even he’s not sure of.

On the eve of SNL’s 50th anniversary, it’s a particular pleasure to watch how unlikely it all was at the beginning. Chevy Chase honing the frat boy charm that would make him a movie star. Garrett Morris saying America’s racial quiet part out loud. Belushi a bundle of Id in the corner. Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, and Gilda Radner holding their own against a tide of comedy testosterone.

Director Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air, Ghostbusters: Afterlife) has made certified classics, but he’s never made a film like this. Fuelled by the same anarchic energy that drove the show to air, he orchestrates this tour de force as a glorious circus of talent, ambition, and appetite for risk, with the clock ticking down to showtime.

CAMERON BAILEY

Content advisory: drug use, coarse language