Saturday Night

Screened on VOD.

I'm glad my hopes weren't up too high for this one, as it allowed to me focus on some of the bright spots in an otherwise somewhat mediocre film. My explanation for that description is while both the cast and casting were actually quite decent, surprisingly so, especially with Matt Wood's portrayal of John Belushi being impressive and sometimes uncanny, the execution of what should be a hard-to-fuck up set-up was ... lame.

The issue is .... well I'm not entirely sure. I think I would need another watch or two to figure it out. It's not bad or terrible, but it has strong Wikipedia-put-to-screen vibes, along with a feel they're trying to style-steal from other films. For instance the whole walk-and-talk style of the presentation, and I don't blame them for choosing it due to the story (the 90 minutes or so leading up to the first episode's live airing), had very evident borrowings from films like Birdman, and television shows like The West Wing. The issue is there's no unique stamp on it here, which is REALLY necessary for a film's success when it's covering something in history, where the interest level is generally niche. So there's that, and the score from Jon Baptiste which is just another layer of influence gone too far - it does not benefit this film at ALL and was super distracting for me. Took me right out of the film very early on.

I don't know, Jason Reitman is just too fucking vanilla for my taste and that's what he offered here yet again to the film's detriment. A fascinating story with promising casting gone mostly to waste. I sound angry. I'm not. Not even disappointed. It was entertaining enough, and you could see flashes here and there where you could see something brilliant trying to burst through the screen. It just never happens.