With Saturday Night going wide this week, I thought now would be good time for a quick power ranking of SNL movies.
1. Wayne’s World
2. Coneheads
3. Wayne’s World 2
4. Blues Brothers
5. MacGruber
6. Superstar
7. A Nights at the Roxbury
8. The Ladies Man
9. Blues Brothers 2000
10. It’s Pat
The takeaway from that ranking is there are a lot of bad movie based on SNL characters. But what about a film about creating the iconic show? That can’t be bad, can it? On to the reviews!
This had the makings to be a really interesting one. The premise of this was a man named Edward (played by Sebastian Stan) has nuerofibromatosis. He undergoes a procedure to change his appearance. Now that he looks like Stan, he finds another person with his same condition, Oswald (played by Adam Pearson), that live a life that Edward never could have. This leaves Edward missing his old life. The film itself is good. It just takes so long to get places in it Stan and Pearson are great, but the problem it feels like it takes too long to get to Oswald. It really only takes an hour, but that first hour feels like 2. I get that we are supposed to get that Edward in the inside is a person who has problems that changing to outside won’t help. It just takes its time to get to that point and it kind of bothered me.
I went into this one with pretty high expectations. I’m a big SNL fan, and I know a lot about the early years of the iconic show. This lived up to those expectations. It was awesome. I’ve heard some reviewers say that the inaccuracies really were a problem for them. They didn’t bother me for a simple reason: this isn’t a documentary. It was Jason Reitman’s way of showing what the craziness of that first night could have been.
There are two big reasons why I am so high on this film. The first is the pacing. Framed as the 90 minutes leading up to going live for the first time, our soundtrack is a ticking clock or sound checks for the musical guests. That ticking adds to the tension of the film. That is the magic trick to this one. Everyone going in to the film knows they make it to air, but the film made me question that a little. The bigger reason I love this film is the cast. There are no weak spots to the ensemble. While everyone is good, there are a few that stood out to me. I’m reading a lot loved Corey Michael Smith as Chevy, but I thought Dylan O’Brien was scary good as Aykroyd. Gabriel Luna continues his hot acting start as Lorne, and he really carries the movie like he is supposed to. Also, Tommy Dewey as O’Donoghue had some of the best moments. Finally, how JK Simmons plays Milton Berle is kind of fun when you know he will be banned after his only hosting spot in 1979.
I’m not sure people who don’t like SNL will get that much out of this. There are so many in-jokes in this that will mean nothing to them. Franken and I think was Davis are seen multiple times workshopping the Julia Child sketch that would appear a few years later. Also, I think I spotted a box of Colin Blow that I think is about 15 years too early to be existing at that point in time. Still, I’m not one of those people. I loved this one, and it will surely be in the Top 10 at year’s end.
I’m a fan of Stephen King’s novel this is obviously an adaptation of. I also don’t mind the previous two attempts to tell this story. Is this one of the better King adaptations in recent years? Not quite, but that could be me bringing the book into play. There are issues with this movie though. For it being a two hour runtime, they kind of fly through the plot. The issue with adapting the novel is there are so many characters with their own storylines. It’s almost impossible to make a film based on the novel in under 4 hours without cutting a lot, and that’s what they did here. They also really changed the storylines for main characters. Matt suffers the most on that front, but Father Callahan sees a different, worse fate in this one. Pullman was good as Ben, and the kid they got to play was really good. One last point. This movie just felt like a tv movie. It didn’t seem like the budget was very high. That would be ok, except for one thing: this was supposed to have a theatrical release. Perhaps the studio saved themselves from having a huge bomb on their hands. It should get more eyes on it this month being on MAX.
Who is this film for? It’s not negative enough to appease the Trump haters, and it’s not positive enough to stop his camp from trying to stop its release. It’s just two hours of watching the inner workings of the elite, and not really having anyone to root for. Nobody other than probably Ivana is a good person, and at least one of our two mains is borderline evil. No, I’m not referring to Trump there. I was talking about Roy Cohn. You come to the film to see Sebastian Stan (second film for him this week for me) attempt to play Donald Trump. You stay for Jeremy Stong’s Cohn. Good gravy he is great in this. Stan has the mannerisms down for Trump, but Trump never has been a terribly interesting person to me. It’s when Cohn is part of the story, things open up a little. Saying that though is a lot. This isn’t a great film. What we cover is Trump in the 70 and 80s just starting his real estate boom. We also are in the time period of his marriage to Ivana. While Maria Bakalova is good here, she is given barely anything to do as Trump and Cohn are taking up all story here. Popular thought was that no studio wanted it because it was so controversial. After seeing it, I’m left with thinking none of those studios wanted it because it just isn’t good. The Free Market will decide and that seems appropriate for this film.
I was a little surprised Terrifier 3 came in first this past weekend. It has the smallest of audiences to see it due to its content. I’m less surprised that Joker 2 dropped so much in week 2. Word of mouth has killed it, and I certainly didn’t help things in my small way. This next week only has one release, so it’s an easy pick for the winner.
- Smile 2
- The Wild Robot
- Terrifier 3
- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
- Joker: Folie à Deux
Final full week for me before my trip to Chicago, and with me up to at least 10 films over 6 days, this next week is a stay at home week. I have 4 streaming movies from 4 different services planned, so hopefully at least one of them will be good. I watched one of them already, and it’s a bottom 10 one, so maybe one of the other 3 will make up for it…..
Mitten Film Nerd 
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