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    ‘Saturday Night’ Review: Live TV at Its Mildest

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    When it debuted 50 years ago, “S.N.L.” was chaotic, rangy, even offensive. But nothing’s wild or crazy in Jason Reitman’s fictional reimagining of its first episode.Movies about tectonic cultural shifts tend to be too neat and tidy, too frictionless. “Saturday Night,” the director Jason Reitman’s fictional reimagining of the debut of “Saturday Night Live,” is a nice, safe movie about a revolution. Busily plotted and sporadically funny, it is a backstage look at the night a gang of comics whom most of the world had never heard of began taking over TVs across the country. It was a comedy home invasion on a national scale, and it was glorious (when it didn’t suck).The movie, written by Reitman and Gil Kenan, has a straightforward conceit. It opens at on Oct. 11, 1975, the night that the show, then called “NBC’s Saturday Night,” is scheduled to debut. (The name was changed in 1977.) In just 90 minutes — ticktock — the show will go live if the performers, writers, crew, network suits and some guy named Lorne can get it together in time. A lot of money, reputations and possibly bright futures are riding on the show, but with its deadline looming, it still seems underbaked and, from some vantage points, overly abstract.To convey that premiere and what it portended, Reitman both sticks to the historical record and embellishes it, building momentum by zeroing in on some mini-crisis amid rapid edits, swish pans and rushing bodies. Everything and everyone at 30 Rockefeller Plaza runs too fast or seems immobilized, with characters either in frenetic motion or huddling in pools of flop sweat. As the minutes pass, Reitman periodically cuts to a clock onscreen or someone calls out the time; at one point, a set designer, Leo Yoshimura (Abraham Hsu), slowly begins installing bricks on the stage of Studio 8H, each brick an emblem of the show’s parts sliding into place.In a (real) 1975 news release, NBC called the show “a new concept in late-night programming.” The network wanted a replacement for weekend reruns of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” and this venture was going to be a comedy show with sketches, musical guests, short films and the Muppets. But it was unclear what it was, maybe even to those behind the scenes. That much seems obvious when an NBC executive, Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), asks the show’s creator-producer, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), if he knows what it is. The straight-faced Lorne responds with an amusing, self-aggrandizing analogy involving Edison, the lightbulb and electricity. Who are you in this metaphor, the baffled exec asks.Lorne doesn’t answer, but the movie does by making him its focus. The character is less interesting than his surroundings — he’s more a blurry place holder than a fully realized personality — but whether here or there, Lorne is the center of this storm. He’s the hub, the visionary, the guy who can see past the chaos. Sure, there’s his wife, the writer Rosie Shuster (a tart Rachel Sennott); the host, George Carlin (Matthew Rhys); and a creepy suit, Dave Tebet (Willem Dafoe, in by far the funniest turn). But the star is Lorne because even genius apparently needs a boss.So, hi Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Jane Curtin (Kim Matula), Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn), Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris, no relation) and John Belushi (Matt Wood). It’s nice to see them, so it’s too bad that only a few of the actors playing the main cast — and only the men — manage to register. That’s the case even when Reitman gestures at the show’s gender problems, as in a peek at a still-funny sketch about female construction workers learning how to harass a guy in short shorts. It’s Dan’s squirmy embarrassment, and how he then wags his rump, that makes it work.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘I Used to Be Funny’ Review: Bruising Punchlines

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      The film, which stars Rachel Sennott as a stand-up comedian, looks at the aftereffects of trauma on a character who wields quips as both weapon and shield.The perceptive dramedy “I Used to Be Funny” features a mic-drop performance by Rachel Sennott as a rising stand-up comedian derailed by a vague, internet-viral crime. What happened to Sam (Sennott) is no laughing matter. But she and her fellow comics crack oblique jokes about it, anyway. Making her first feature, the writer-director Ally Pankiw lets most zingers land. Comedy is just how these strivers communicate — it’s how they break awkwardness, bond, fight, forgive and heal.Pankiw warms up the audience with Sam’s roommates Paige and Philip (Sabrina Jalees and Caleb Hearon, both terrific) poking fun at a 14-year-old runaway, Brooke (Olga Petsa), last seen smashing in their front door. “She’s probably loving the missing person posters,” Paige drolls. “They used a selfie, she looks great.”Before she was a recluse, Sam was the lost girl’s nanny. The film is peppered with happier flashbacks to when Sam and Brooke were best pals, a team-up that annoyed Brooke’s humorless dad (Jason Jones). We track time through the perkiness of Sam’s posture and ponytail. Depression films can be a drag. Fortunately, Sennott is entertaining even as a mope.The script takes an annoyingly long time revealing what went wrong (and then rushes the resolution). Pankiw is more focused on the aftereffects of trauma on a character who wields quips as both weapon and shield. A former stand-up herself, Sennott holds a stage with command. Off-duty, unshowered and unable to move on, Sam is self-aware enough to know that she is exhausting her friends — and the film keeps tabs on how often she and her gang must claim they’re just kidding around.I Used to Be FunnyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Bottoms’ and the Tricky Tone of a Horror-Indie-Drama-Action-Teen-Sex Comedy

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      The director Emma Seligman took a big leap from her buzzy feature debut, “Shiva Baby.” But this is the film she wanted to make all along.In “Bottoms,” a pair of teenagers start a fight club in their high school gym. The twist: The pugilists are lesbians, and they are whaling on each other — in the guise of self-defense — as a way to attract the hottest cheerleaders. (It’s a satire on many levels.)The writer-director Emma Seligman had the idea and sold the script — to Elizabeth Banks’s production company — even before her feature debut, “Shiva Baby,” put her on the indie filmmaker map in 2021.“I really love teen adventure movies,” Seligman said in a phone interview, “and giving queer kids the chance to be in that story.”Seligman, 28, grew up in Toronto in a family of film buffs. “Everyone here is always just talking about movies,” she said. By 10, she was a judge at a children’s film festival; later she got involved with the Toronto International Film Festival. She studied the subject at New York University, where she met the two stars of “Bottoms” — Rachel Sennott (who co-wrote the film) and Ayo Edebiri, a breakout actress from “The Bear.” (Seligman has an eye for talent: “Bottoms” also features Nicholas Galitzine, of “Red, White & Royal Blue,” as a quarterback boyfriend; and the former N.F.L. player Marshawn Lynch as a teacher with questionable methods.)“Shiva Baby,” about a young woman who encounters her sugar daddy at a shiva, was based on Seligman’s experience of Jewish life and on her college milieu. “I went on one sugar date,” she said. “Not everyone was doing it, but so many people were doing it to the point where it was so normal.” (It wasn’t ultimately her thing.) “Bottoms,” though it exists in a heightened world, is also personal. “It’s just wanting to see yourself,” said Seligman, who is gay. As she recalled Banks telling her: “You can’t underestimate how much young people want to see themselves onscreen.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“Shiva Baby” had a small cast and essentially one set. “Bottoms” has an ensemble and multiple locations. How did you prepare to scale up?The jump was quite challenging. I knew there were going to be a million and one lessons I was going to have to learn, but I just didn’t know what they were going to be. It’s like knowing you’re about to get hazed but not knowing how.I tried to have conversations with as many directors as I could to get their advice — Adam McKay, Greg Berlanti, who directed “Love, Simon,” and Atom Egoyan. It was helpful, but most of them were like, “You’re not going to know until you’re just doing it.” I went to [Elizabeth Banks’s] house before we shot, and we talked about costume and hair and improv — it wasn’t her giving didactic advice. It was me asking: “As a director, how do you prepare to do this?” And everyone was like, stop asking questions. Stop getting in your head.Edebiri and Sennott in “Bottoms.” Seligman said she “wanted to satirize the way female friendship is often shoved down our throats onscreen with teen girls.”via Orion Pictures IncRachel Sennott has starred in both your films. What clicked with you two?Neither of us were in the industry or came from industry families. Her level of ambition and organization and her intense work ethic was really inspiring. It’s a wild thing to be like, “I’m going to devote all this time to writing two screenplays, when there’s nothing in the world telling me that this will work out.” Her energy was: “It’s not crazy, we will do it, and we will make a living.” It’s rare for someone to want to see you succeed as much as they want themselves to succeed.How did you envision Ayo Edebiri in this role?I met Ayo at a party before I met Rachel. I had a vague idea of “Bottoms” in my head. And I was like, “Oh, if I ever made that high school movie, that girl would be so funny in it.” It’s been really incredible to watch her grow into the success that she’s become. It’s not a surprise at all to me, but I feel a little bit like I have street cred because I’m like, “Yeah, I knew.” She’s just so funny. We finished “Bottoms,” and “The Bear” came out a month later and her world changed.Where did you want to focus your satire?The way queer teen characters are always so innocent in teen movies. Whether they’re being traumatized or finding love, they’re so sweet and often don’t have any sexual thoughts at all — or if they do, they’re not expressing it, or they’re not talking in a vulgar way. And we also wanted to satirize the way female friendship is often shoved down our throats onscreen with teen girls — characters that are like, “I love you, queen! You’re the best thing ever!” We wanted to make fun of that.“Bottoms” builds on a lot of the teen movie canon, starting with “Heathers.” What else did you use as a reference?We pulled from that era of the ’90s — I guess “Heathers” is the ’80s — but that kind of female, campy, driven, high school and murder [comedy].“Bring It On” was a big reference. That movie strikes such a beautiful tone of campiness while caring deeply about the characters — it’s right on the edge. “Pen15,” definitely — looking at the show about this beautiful female friendship, that was so ridiculous and stupid at the same time, and so relatable. That came out right around when we started writing. “Wet Hot American Summer” was a big one. There’s not murder in that. But they do get addicted to heroin for the day. And Liz is in it, which is also great.How did you find the right tone?It took a long time to figure that out. I don’t think Rachel and I originally intended to have the audience care about the characters that much. We actually felt like in female comedy, there’s too much stress on, “Care about these girls” and “Care about the friendship.” We wanted to give the female characters a chance to be so [terrible] that you’re not supposed to care about them at all. But I think over the years, as we would get notes from our producers or the studio, we let up a little bit.I really think tone is always the trickiest thing to master. And I would love one day to do a movie that’s just one genre, to see if it’s any easier than a horror-indie-dramedy-action-teen-sex-comedy, or whatever we did. More

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      ‘Bottoms’ Review: Physical Education

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      In this buddy comedy, senior outcasts played by Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri attempt to woo two cheerleaders through a fight club.Josie and PJ are high school seniors, and they have some pressing unfinished business. “Do you want to be the only girl virgin at Sarah Lawrence?” PJ (Rachel Sennott) asks Josie (Ayo Edebiri) during the dark-night-of-the-soul conversation that begins “Bottoms.” Yes, Emma Seligman’s comedy takes off with tires screeching.It is imperative for our buddies to have sex, stat, but that is a complicated proposition: Not only are they unpopular outcasts — “the ugly, untalented gays,” as opposed to the ones who breezily sashay down the hallways — but they have set their sights on two unapproachably hot cheerleaders. It is obvious that PJ and Josie will need some devious scheming to win over their crushes.Going along with a rumor that they’ve spent time in juvenile detention, the pair acquire an instant reputation as tough girls and the school lets them start a self-defense club in which the most vicious brawls are somehow allowed. Even Josie’s object of desire, Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), is impressed by consciousness-raising through punching, even more so after she learns her quarterback boyfriend (Nicholas Galitzine, of “Red, White & Royal Blue”) is cheating on her.Seligman and Sennott’s first collaboration was the quietly unsettling “Shiva Baby” (2021), which took place almost entirely over the span of one afternoon at the title wake, and progressively ensnared Sennott’s character in a web of deadpan, discomforting humor. For their follow-up, the collaborators (Sennott wrote the movie with Seligman) have gone down a completely different stylistic road, putting a queer spin on teenage sex comedies à la “Superbad” and “American Pie.” They have replaced the death by a thousand cuts of “Shiva Baby” with a gleeful broadness. It ultimately fizzes out, but “Bottoms” confirms that Seligman and Sennott are major new forces in American comedy.A lot does click here, including several delicious supporting performances, most notably the former N.F.L. running back Marshawn Lynch as the fight club’s loopy faculty adviser and Ruby Cruz as Hazel, a cool classmate whom, naturally, PJ does not even see. The script also lands many corkers, as when a student named Annie (Zamani Wilder) complains “this is the second wave all over again” after realizing PJ and Josie were prioritizing self-serving goals over sisterhood.That last aspect is what feels most undernourished and, in the end, unexpectedly timid. Not much is made of the fact that PJ is one of the biggest liars and bullies of the story and uses her gift of gab to cynically deploy empowerment messaging. And while the movie is set in a surreally heightened universe in which football players never leave their uniform and teachers read girlie magazines in class, it is oddly more comfortable goofing off with outrageous violence than elementary sexuality.For most of its tight running time, “Bottoms” hovers on the cusp of greatness. It’s often funny but it also never delivers satisfying set pieces, and stops short of questioning — not to mention subverting — the warped high school stratification that remains one of America’s building blocks.BottomsRated R for typical teen language, fight-club violence and football run amok. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Tahara’ Review: Hierarchy at a Hebrew-School Funeral

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      Rachel Sennott and Madeline Grey DeFreece star in a canny portrait of teenage insensitivity and sexuality amid a tragedy.The Hebrew-school comedy “Tahara” mimics the zinging pleasure of overhearing teenagers chatter as they walk home from school: It’s gossipy, delicious and a tad cruel. The film eavesdrops on a group of teenage students during a critical day in their lives, when a classmate’s funeral has prompted them to wrestle with social status and school personas. Their dialogue crackles with vocal fry and viciousness as they reckon, maybe for the first time, with the consequences of school hierarchies.The story follows two longtime friends, Carrie (Madeline Grey DeFreece) and Hannah (Rachel Sennott), for a day of mourning alongside their classmates, crushes and nemeses at a Rochester, N.Y., synagogue. One of their peers, Samantha, has committed suicide, and the synagogue is hosting a talk-back session for students to share their feelings about her death. Carrie is an honest type, and she’s perplexed by the melodramatic performances of grief shown by her classmates. Hannah, on the other hand, is more interested in flirting than in grieving. Her pursuit of attention adds a discordant note to an already chaotic requiem. It’s a diminished chord that Carrie wants to resolve — particularly because she harbors feelings for Hannah, who kisses her in the synagogue bathroom under the guise of practicing for a boy.“Tahara” — a feature debut for both its director, Olivia Peace, and its writer, Jess Zeidman — smartly zeros in on the divide between students and the adults who try to facilitate conversations about grief. For the grown-ups, Samantha’s death is a matter of gravity that calls for solemn mourning. But some students respond with ambivalence, treating the suicide as an opportunity to add tallies to the ledger of who is attractive and who is disliked. Peace, the director, adds to the claustrophobia of this high-school panopticon by presenting the movie in a square format: It is shot with the kind of boxy frame common in old Hollywood movies, which here evokes an Instagram post. This is a canny, compact portrait of teenage insensitivity, all the more riveting for its biting dialogue and funny performances.TaharaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 18 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Shiva Baby’ Review: It’s Complicated

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      The potential land mines of a young woman’s life are set to explode simultaneously in this tense comedy from Emma Seligman.“Just try to behave yourself today,” her mother pleads. But alas, larger forces of the universe seem to be working against Danielle (Rachel Sennott), who finds all of the potential land mines in her life exploding simultaneously at the shiva of a family friend in Emma Seligman’s nerve-racking comedy “Shiva Baby.”Danielle is feeling especially aimless; her parents are still paying her bills, and the money she tells them she makes from babysitting is, in fact, contributed by “sugar daddies” (older men who pay her for sexual favors and attention). She’s already rankled by the interrogations of family friends, and the unexpected presence of an ex-girlfriend (Molly Gordon), when her primary benefactor (Danny Deferrari) walks in the door — with his heretofore unmentioned wife (Dianna Agron) and baby in tow.The single location and collapsed time frame of Seligman’s screenplay give it the efficiency of a well-constructed stage play. But Danielle’s ordeal is as tense as any thriller, with the strained small talk, copious side-eyes and unapologetic gossip augmented by nervous camerawork, jarring sound effects and a jangling, dissonant musical score. It’s rare for a film to simultaneously balance such wildly divergent tones, to interweave big laughs with gut-wrenching discomfort, but Seligman pulls it off.Her cast helps. Sennott is a revelation, and that matters; she carries much of the picture’s weight on her face, and its ability to express the mounting levels of stress and deadpan reactions. She’s surrounded by some of the best character actors in the game (including a standout turn from Fred Melamed as her father), while she and Gordon beautifully convey the pain, anger and leftover heat of their relationship.Seligman piles on the complications with the clockwork precision of a Rube Goldberg machine, but never at the service of the genuine emotions at the picture’s core. Near the conclusion, Danielle surrenders to the sheer helplessness of being completely overwhelmed, a moment that perhaps lands with more impact after a year of collective isolation and fear. “Shiva Baby” knows that feeling, and another important one besides: that in the midst of nonstop stress and distraction, a moment of quiet, unprompted tenderness can make all the difference.Shiva BabyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 17 minutes. In select theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More