Saw it tonight and it's a lot of fun.
Fair warning, I would say it's maybe
slightly more of a drama than a comedy, though, due mostly to the ticking clock element. Or, rather, while it obviously has a number of laughs, I just don't know that I'd categorize it solely as a comedy.
Also, some performances definitely work better and feel more natural than others. There a couple that, frankly, are super on-the-nose/run-of-mill impersonations, while others uncannily embody the original actors, and work far better.
Overall, I'd say the movie is more akin in tone/vibe to
Steve Jobs than I was expecting. And like
Steve Jobs, they pack a lot of somewhat unbelievable story into the final moments/countdown before a show, it's just that
Steve Jobs was a bit more skilled at doing so. To be clear, though, writer/director Jason Reitman said everything in the movie actually happened in real life, it's just that not all of it happened in the 90 minutes leading up to the first show.
The craziest part of the night, actually, is that Reitman told us this in person.
I bought tickets a couple weeks back, and they since turned it into a Q&A screening, without any announcement that I was aware of. We showed up and there were six director's chair at the front of the theater, then just before the movie a theater employee came out and told us to stick around after for a live Q&A, to everyone's surprise. Turns out, it was Reitman and four cast members…
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Gabriel LaBelle (Lorne Michaels)
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Cory Micheal Smith (Chevy Chase)
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Kim Matula (Jane Curtin)
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Taylor Gray (Al Franken)
… all of whom were super cool/down to earth. Afterward, they even had literal film strips from the movie to give away, and the actors all waded into the crowd to hand them out to everyone, and then even mingled for a bit after (which is super rare for a Q&A). In fact, we ended up walking out with Cory Michael Smith and Kim Matula and told them what a great job they did, (truly, they give the two best performances, IMO).
That's movie going in LA. Every so often you randomly go to a movie on a Friday night, then ten minutes after it ends the star of the movie is handing you a film strip
from the movie, haha.
But yeah, while not quite as great as the effusive praise from the festivals (surprise, surprise), it's a good time for sure and absolutely worth seeing in theaters, when it finally goes wide next weekend (which is literally the same exact weekend the show debuted in 1975)...