Tag: Jason Reitman

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Saturday Night

Saturday Night, like SNL, lives or dies on the strength of its ensemble. (Photo: Courtesy Sony)

Nearly every comedian who has ever worked with him has a Lorne Michaels imitation in their repertoire. Mike Myers, for example, famously based Austin Powers’ nemesis Dr. Evil series on the legendary TV producer. Michaels, a Canadian who got his start in the late 1960s writing for Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, holds the record for the most Emmy nominations (106), with 21 wins. His most famous and enduring creation, Saturday Night Live, holds the record for the most Emmy wins, taking in 92 trophies over the 50 years since its debut in 1975. 

Michaels is, by all accounts, a demanding and no-nonsense boss, beloved and hated in equal measures. But I guess you have to be like that if you’re going to pull off something as audacious as a 90-minute live television broadcast of original comedy every week for decades. It’s telling that SNL’s creative nadir coincided with Michaels’ four-year hiatus from the show in the early 1980s. SNL may not drive the cultural conversation the way it used to, but it’s still here, and, thanks to its format of short comedy skits, it’s still relevant in the social media era. 

Saturday Night is billed as an origin story for Saturday Night Live, but like SNL itself, it’s really the Lorne Michaels show. Michaels is played by Gabriel LaBelle, who recently portrayed young Steven Spielberg in The Fabelmans, as a brash youngster in way over his head. Interestingly, LaBelle is 22, while Michaels was 31 when SNL first went live from New York on October 11, 1975. That’s two years before director Jason Reitman was born. He and co-writer Gil Kenan chose to model their film after González Iñárritu’s Best Picture winner Birdman, a near-real-time account of the backstage drama on the night a play premieres. This approach necessitates quite a bit of historical revision. While the opening night was apparently a pretty fraught affair, it did not include moments like Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons) whipping it out, or Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris, no relation) singing, “I’m gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whities I see!” 

Both of those things did happen later in the first season, though, and this isn’t a documentary. SNL lives or dies every season on the strength of its ensemble, and so does Saturday Night. The main cast, all of whom became legends in their own right, is well represented. Cory Michael Smith is just a little too good looking to be Chevy Chase, but he’s got that frat boy arrogance down. Dan Aykroyd always kind of seemed like he was doing a character, even when he wasn’t, so Dylan O’Brien’s job is a little easier. Matt Wood most closely resembles his character, John Belushi, but the legend’s manic energy is hard to fake without mountains of cocaine. (One of the film’s funniest bits is when Morris shows Belushi some pharmaceutical grade yayo he’s been gifted by Billy Preston (Jon Batiste, who also did the score), and Belushi promptly snorts the whole vial.) Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt) and Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn) seem rather thin and underutilized, but then again, that’s how the show treated them in the first season. Jane Curtin (Kim Matula) has her best moment with Morris, wondering what the hell they’re doing here. 

They weren’t the only ones. The NBC brass, represented by Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman) and David Tebet (Willem Dafoe), seem confused as to what is actually going on the air at 11:30 p.m. Eastern. The biggest historical revelation from the film is that SNL was green-lit to put pressure on Tonight Show host Johnny Carson, who was negotiating a new contract with NBC at the time. Only Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), Michaels’ ex-wife and writing partner, believes in his vision — whatever it is. 

The “Let’s put on a show!” structure ultimately serves Saturday Night well because it forces the filmmakers to keep the individual bits, culled from interviews with the surviving first season cast and crew, short and punchy. It also keeps the moments of maudlin hagiography to a minimum. Saturday Night plays like a good episode of SNL: lots of amusing bits, a couple of belly laughs, and it never outstays its welcome. 

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Ghostbusters: Afterlife

McKenna Grace as Phoebe, with Logan Kim as Podcast, in Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Ghostbusters is a prime example of lightning in a bottle. There are some things that are just unique products of the time and place where they were created. They defy formula. Even if you put the same team back together and gave them all the tools and time they needed, they couldn’t replicate their success. 

The 1984 Ghostbusters was the product of the fevered mind of Dan Aykroyd. The story of a trio of misfit scientists who travel through time and space to battle supernatural threats was meant as a follow-up to his and John Belushi’s mega-hit The Blues Brothers, with the third part to be played by Eddie Murphy. After Belushi died in 1982, Murphy got his own franchise with Beverly Hills Cop, and Aykroyd retreated into a fallout shelter on Martha’s Vineyard with Harold Ramis to retool the script for Bill Murray and director Ivan Reitman. The Ghostbusters became supernatural entrepreneurs, more pest control than Doctor Who. 

Grace, Kim, and Finn Wolfhard cruisin’ in the Ectomobile.

Genre-wise, the fantasy action comedy had very little precedent. Reitman got the tone exactly right. It was the post-Star Wars sci-fi boom, so there was an ample budget for special effects. Aykroyd was still at the top of his game, Ramis played Spock-but-funny, Ernie Hudson was the relatable everyman, Sigourney Weaver was sexy as hell, and Murray delivered one of the greatest comedy performances of all time. Propelled by a theme song by former Stevie Wonder sideman Ray Parker Jr. that became an unlikely No. 1 hit, Ghostbusters became the most profitable comedy of all time. 

When the principals got back together five years later for Ghostbusters II, it wasn’t the same. The film has its moments, but the elements never gel the way they did the first time out. For years, Aykroyd worked on a third installment, called Hellbent, but Murray saw the writing on the wall and once Ramis died in 2014, that seemed to be the end of it. 

But Ghostbusters is all about coming back from the dead, so in 2016, a gender-swapped version was produced with Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon. It, too, had its moments, but lacked that certain magic, and was the subject of a sexist social media backlash. Which might be why Ghostbusters: Afterlife exists. 

At least it’s better than The Rise of Skywalker, the other film that was produced as a response to closed-minded people freaking out over changes to their favorite ’80s film franchise. Produced by Ivan Reitman and directed by his son Jason Reitman, Afterlife moves the action from New York City to rural Oklahoma. Callie (Carrie Coon) gets evicted from her New York apartment with her two children, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), only to find out that her estranged father has died and left them a spooky old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. While Callie tries to deal with her late father’s estate, Trevor tries to fit in with the local teens — especially cool girl Lucky (Celeste O’Connor). Phoebe, a budding science geek who is too smart for her own good, is drawn into investigating unexplained earthquake swarms with her summer school teacher Gary (Paul Rudd). This part of the film is a solid kids-solving-mysteries story, like Goonies, but less annoying. 

As the story threads come together, Phoebe and Trevor learn that their grandfather, whom they never met, was Egon Spengler, a member of the Ghostbusters who cleaned up the Manhattan ghost flap of 1984. Naturally, the reason he moved to central Oklahoma was ghost-related, and now his grandkids must clean up the mess he left behind or, you know … human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! 

It’s weird to say, but it’s the familiar elements that derail Afterlife. Just when things get cooking with the new kids, we have to pause to re-introduce the Ectomobile. When the surviving old guys show up to help save the day, it seems perfunctory. Even the glorious moment when Bill Murray is doing Peter Venkman again undercuts the “action” part of “action comedy.” 

You can’t catch lightning in a bottle a second time. But I’m willing to give Ghostbusters: Afterlife the benefit of the doubt for two reasons: one, the screenplay mostly works, with the story flowing from the internal logic Aykroyd set up in 1984, even though it’s not nearly as funny. And two, Mckenna Grace gives an absolutely crackerjack performance. Mark my words, she’s a movie star in waiting. 

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Tully

In the mid-1970s, film critic Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of “male gaze.” The vast majority of films, she said, were told from a male point of view, because the power structures that controlled Hollywood and all the other major film production centers of the world were overwhelmingly male. Men were the protagonists and antagonists, and women were mostly just there to be looked at. This point of view bias was so deeply ingrained in movies that it was difficult for many people of both sexes to even perceive it, much less imagine what a film devoid of male gaze would be like.

Now it’s the woke 21st century, but the vast majority of films are still headed by men, despite major initiatives by women inside and outside the industry. Tully is directed by a man (Jason Reitman, son of the legendary producer/director Ivan Reitman), but its point of view is decidedly female, thanks to the film’s other major creative partners. Diablo Cody, who broke into the business with 2007’s Juno, wrote the screenplay and produced it alongside its star, Charlize Theron.

With a little mental work, one can imagine how Tully‘s story would break out if it were from a male point of view. It would go something like this: Drew (Ron Livingston) is a hard working father whose wife Marlo (Charlize Theron) goes to great lengths to convince him to help out with the parenting duties.

Mackenzie Davis stars opposite Charlize Theron in Diablo Cody’s Tully.

Maybe the I Love Lucy version is how it looks to Drew, but that’s not how it looks to Marlo. To her, pregnant with their third child, Drew is barely there. He travels frequently for work, and when he’s home, he spends his free time slaying video game zombies. Their kindergarten age son Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica) is starting to exhibit signs of serious autism, making his transition to school very difficult. The couple’s struggles are put into sharp relief by a visit to Marlo’s brother Craig’s (director/producer Mark Duplass) enormous Modernist home, complete with servants and a nanny.

Craig, hinting at difficulties with postpartum depression Marlo had after Jonah was born, offers to foot the bill for a part-time nanny who will come in at night so Marlo can get some sleep. Drew’s pride is wounded by his more affluent brother-in-law, so at first they decline the offer, but once baby Mia is born, Marlo’s situation moves from difficult to impossible. That’s when Tully (Mackenzie Davis) arrives. Tully is the perfect helper — maybe a little too perfect. She’s almost like the female version of the male gaze trope of the quirky girlfriend who exists only to improve the life of the male comedic lead — a Manic Pixie Dream Nanny.

Tully takes its time in the wind up, but that’s okay since it gives the audience more time with Theron. She was already one of cinema’s great actresses before her immortal turn as Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. Since then, she’s been doing a lot of presumably well paid action leads, such as the fun but slight Atomic Blonde. Seeing her do comedy/drama naturalism is like a sip of fine wine after drinking from the box for too long. From the first shot of the film, which focuses on her ready-to-pop pregnant belly, she is photographed in a series of increasingly unflattering situations, many of which involve breast pumps. Cody’s self-aware, wisecracking dialog hasn’t found an actor who worked with it so well since Ellen Page in Juno. Theron sells it by trying to sound polite and normal while delivering cutting barbs.

Once Tully enters the scene, everyone fades to the background as the film becomes a tight two-hander between her and Marlo. Davis has masterfully handled an intense female relationship before, in Sophia Takal’s excellent Always Shine. Here, it’s less about jealous lesbian murder and more about cupcakes and self-care. But even as Marlo relaxes into the situation and accepts the help she didn’t think she needed, undercurrents of tension and subtext swirl around the two women.

Reitman and Cody try for an ambitious ending, and don’t quite stick the landing. But then again, Tully is all about the problems of excessive expectations of perfection thrust upon women in general and mothers in particular. Once you watch it, you’re going to want to do something nice for your mom.