An uneven look at SNL’s first show

 

  Who among us doesn't know what the letters SNL stand for? OK, it's Saturday Night Live, the show that recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. That's half a century of sketches, new comic faces, weekend updates, and cold opens. The show has hooked successive generations of younger viewers and created long-time loyalists.

    Perhaps understanding the place SNL has earned in American culture, director Jason Reitman, working from a script he co-wrote with Gil Kenan, has made Saturday Night, an energized look at the 90 minutes preceding the first time Chevy Chase uttered the keynote words, "Live from New York. It's Saturday Night."

    If you're a committed SNL fan, you may find amusement in Reitman's brisk examination of how producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) survived turmoil that included the use of drugs on set, personality clashes, and what sometimes looks like a show-threatening helping of amateurism.

   Difficulties seem to compound as air time approaches: John Belushi (Matt Wood) hadn't yet signed his contract, and an NBC executive (Willem Dafoe) threatened to pull the plug in favor of a Johnny Carson Tonight Show rerun.

     If there's a larger point to any of this, it involves Reitman's recognition of a cultural shift. Gone were the days of the jokey brashness of Milton Berle, played here by J.K. Simmons, once known as Mr. Television. SNL pulled off a neat trick: It turned a parodic mindset against the mainstream while becoming part of it.

      The cast is mostly game with a variety of standouts, notably Cory Michael Smith as a self-impressed Chevy Chase. Dylan O'Brian scores as the comically intense Dan Aykroyd; and Tommy Dewey proves mordantly funny as writer Michael O'Donoghue. 

      Kim Matula portrays Jane Curtin with come-what-may ease, and Lamorne Morris appears as Garrett Morris, SNL's first Black cast member. Morris spends most of his time wondering what he's doing on a show no one seems to have a handle on.

       So, is Saturday Night anything more than a big-screen reconstruction of some fabled and some fictionalized moments? Not really.

          For some, the movie will provide a healthy dose of nostalgic pleasure. For me, Saturday Night didn’t generate enough laughs. I didn't buy Wood's scowling John Belushi, and in the end, the movie became a mixed bag: a blur of dizzying camera work and hit-and-miss portrayals of the original SNL cast. 

       Saturday Night aside, my idea of SNL nostalgia has less to do with the show than with watching Belushi in Animal House, Aykroyd in Doctor Detroit, and Chevy Chase in Caddyshack. Those were the days.

        

When motherhood becomes a nightmare

Charlize Theron and Mackenzie Davis play an entertaining duet in Tully, a comedy about the staggering burden of motherhood.

For Marlo, three is definitely not the charm.

We’re talking about Marlo’s third pregnancy, an event that has added much weight to her otherwise well-proportioned frame. Tully -- the latest collaboration between director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody -- introduces us to a very beleaguered mom, played by Charlize Theron. Theron reportedly gained 50 pounds for the role. I leave it to you to decide whether such body stress is justified in the pursuit of one’s art, but Theron never has been one for half measures.

As Aileen Wuornos in Monster, Theron obliterated her beauty to portray a serial killer, the most notable example of the actress's willingness to undergo a physical transformation at the expense of her movie-star looks.

Marlo, whose size and temperament separate her from those who surround her, struggles with issues that pit her sense of well-being against the kind of physical exhaustion and emotional depletion that are fueled by tending to an infant and two additional siblings.

Because her prepartum life isn't exactly wonderous, Marlo carries a weight that’s more than physical. Marlo's marriage has lost all traces of romance. Marlo's bystander of a husband (Ron Livingston) would rather play video games in bed than snuggle up to his wife. It's not that he doesn't care about his wife and kids; it's more that he's lost in his own world.

To further complicate matters, Marlo already has two children, one of whom (Asher Miles Fallica) taxes her patience because of extreme emotional problems that find him terrified by the sound of flushing toilets or relentlessly kicking the back of mom’s seat while she’s driving.

There’s a daughter (Maddie Dixon-Poirier), as well. The daughter seems to pose no out-sized problems, but still ... she's another kid with needs.

Every over-taxed movie mother needs a contrivance to move things along.

Tully's arrives in the form of a gift from Marlo’s affluent brother (Mark Duplass). He offers to pay for a night nanny, a young woman who'll take care of the newborn's overnight needs, thus allowing Marlo to get some much-needed sleep.

At first, Marlo resists, but she becomes so frustrated that she calls in a night nanny.

Enter Tully, the movie’s title character. As played by Mackenzie Davis, Tully is a dream-come-true. She has a great personality. She's in her 20s, but totally understands Marlo and encourages her to take advantage of the service in ways that Marlo hadn’t anticipated. She not only brings the baby to Marlo for night feedings but cleans up the house and ... well ... eventually even awakens Marlo's husband's slumbering libido.

Credit Davis with a showcase performance: She gives Tully such a major helping of verve and savvy that it begins filtering through the entire movie.

As he did in his best movies (Thank You for Smoking and Up in the Air), Reitman wraps Tully's social and psychological interests in a glossy entertainment package. Cody, who previously worked with Reitman on Juno and Young Adult, has been known to produce snarky one-liners but here she leans toward the dark side of Marlo's anger and depression without quite toppling into either.

When Marlo visits her son’s school she initiates an ugly confrontation with the school’s principal over her son’s behavior; Marlo flips onto the dislikable side of the ledger. She’s belligerent with the principal, a woman who genuinely seems concerned about her son's ability to fit into the environment of this private school. Marlo isn't always a joy to be around.

Tully may speak loudly to women who can appreciate the overwhelming tsunami that has smashed on the beaches of Marlo's middle-aged life, a point at which the door has all but slammed shut on her youth.

To make that point, the movie eventually offers a throwback scene in which Marlo and Tully return to Marlo’s old stomping grounds in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn for a night on the town, a foray into the kind of nightlife for which Marlo has become decidedly too old.

It’s difficult to say more without introducing major spoilers, so I’ll simply say that the movie’s ending wraps things up a little too neatly — and, dare I say, with just a hint of a cop-out.

Tully can be seen as another look at a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, a popular enough movie theme and one that still has plenty of life in it -- even if, in Tully, it doesn't produce a conclusion that's as convincing as Theron's performance.

The Internet made them do it

Jason Reitman's Men, Women & Children grabs a techno tiger by the tail.

In Men, Women & Children, director Jason Reitman tries to latch onto something juicy and topical: the ways in which technology can push us apart rather than bringing us closer together.

Although hardly an astonishing insight, this caution about technology works its way into nearly every corner of Reitman's densely populated adaptation of a novel by Chad Kultgen.

Set in a Texas suburb, Men, Women & Children ups it creative ante by employing a large and talented cast, a bit of technological gimmickry (we read texts on the screen as characters type them) and a wry narration delivered by Emma Thompson , who's never seen on screen.

Thompson's narration offers an ironic reminder that the movie's collection of narrow, in-grown stories -- so feverishly important to most of its characters -- take place against a background of vast cosmic indifference.

That's an awfully grand reach for an essentially small movie that tends to focus on sexual relationships -- or the lack of them -- and which, one presumes, is intended as a snapshot of a contemporary reality in which we all are subject to distraction.

Tell me you've never been tempted to look at your phone while watching a movie or even during a face-to-face conversation with someone.

Following on the heels of Reitman's disappointing Labor Day, Men, Women & Children bounces from one story to another as if following links during an Internet browsing session.

The best of these stories involves a sexually dysfunctional family. Adam Sandler plays a husband who has substituted Internet porn and masturbation for a sex life with his wife (Rosemarie DeWitt).

As the story unfolds, Sandler's Don Truby seeks out (via the Internet, of course) a high-priced call girl. His wife, who very much wants to feel desired, uses an Internet site to arrange a sexual liaison with a stranger (Dennis Haysbert).

Meanwhile, the couple's teen-age son (Travis Tope) spends so much time with Internet porn, he can't respond sexually to the advances of a willing cheerleader (Olivia Crocicchia).
Crocicchia's Hannah has preoccupations of her own. Encouraged by a stage-managing mother (Judy Greer), Hannah's the star of a Web site created by her mom in hopes of establishing her daughter as a celebrity and an actress, probably in that order.

Hanna isn't the movie's only cheerleader. Allison (Elena Kampouris), also a cheerleader, visits pro-anorexia websites and engages in acts of self-sabotage, allowing herself to be used by a football player who doesn't give a damn about her.

To say that the plot further thickens doesn't quite do justice to Men, Women & Children's complexity: Dean Norris (who played Hank on Breaking Bad) appears as a father who's upset that his son (Ansel Elgort) has decided to quit playing football. The young man apparently has reached a point of familiar adolescent despair: He has concluded that life is meaningless.

Elgort's Tim becomes involved with Brandy (Kaitlyn Dever), the daughter of an obsessively over-protective mother (Jennifer Garner), who charts her daughter's every on-line move.

Amidst the story clutter, Reitman obtains some fine performances. A surprisingly effective Sandler channels his inner mope to play a guy of quiet dissatisfactions; DeWitt is fine as his frustrated wife; and watching Norris made me hope that he'll find his way into more movies.

A word more on DeWitt: In a late-picture scene, her character faces her husband at a pivotal moment in their relationship. Watch DeWitt's face. She manages one of the most emotionally shattered expressions I've seen in a movie.

Reitman, who also directed Juno, knows how to work with young actors, and the film's many teen-agers acquit themselves well.

Men, Women & Children seems intended as a cautionary tale. I don't think it has the sharpness and brio that has characterized Reitman's best work (Thank You for Smoking and Up in the Air, and not all of the movie's accumulated moments are as telling as must have been intended.

The subject of technological tyranny in ordinary lives isn't quite as compelling as the filmmakers may think, and Reitman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary) sometimes skim reads the movie's characters and situations.

Fair to say, I think, that Men, Women & Children doesn't always see deeply, but credit Reitman for trying to touch the sadness that seems to have descended on so many lives.

'Labor Day' asks us to take a big leap

It might be the most congenial hostage situation ever.

I'm talking about the premise of director Jason Reitman's Labor Day, a movie about an escaped convict and the mother and son he takes as hostages.

Reitman isn't interested in a situation that grows increasingly bizarre, but in one that becomes more ordinary as the movie unfolds. I guess that qualifies as a counter-intuitive approach, but it results in a movie that strains credibility.

Those familiar with Reitman's resume -- Thank You For SmokingJuno, Up in the Air and Young Adult -- will realize that with Labor Day, the director has taken new direction. He has turned his attention to a drama that's cleansed of the kind of quick-witted ironies that have characterized his best work.

Beautifully photographed by cinematographer Eric Steelberg, everything about Labor Day suggests a movie that demands to be taken seriously -- everything that is except a story that derives from Joyce Maynard's 2009 novel.

Reitman, who also wrote the screenplay, takes us to a small New Hampshire town in 1987. There, we meet Henry Wheeler (Gattlin Griffith), a teen-ager who lives with his depressed and isolated mother Adele (Kate Winslet).

During a shopping expedition to a local store, Henry and Adele are confronted by an escaped convict (Josh Brolin).

Brolin's Frank forces himself into the lives of mother and son, insisting that they take him to their home. He needs a place to hide until he can figure out his next move.

But here's the twist that challenges both expectation and perhaps common sense. Nice guy Frank, quickly assumes the role of father figure to Henry, who badly needs one. He also develops a slow simmering relationship with the love-starved and sexually deprived Adele.

The escaped con becomes an idealized savior: handsome, sexy and totally competent at household repairs. Frank even knows how to bake a peach pie. In a sensuously photographed sequence, Frank shares his baking artistry with Adele, who (to borrow a phrase from T.S. Eliot) eventually dares to eat a peach. She falls for Frank.

Movies have a way of creating their own realities, which is to say that they needn't be entirely credible to keep us involved. That's why it's possible to go along with Labor Day, which features an attractive cast and pulls us into the lives of its characters. I guess I'm saying the movie is never less than watchable.

Some of the credit for that accrues to the actors. Brolin conveys Frank's anxieties as well as his boundless capacity for being a helpmate. Winslet is convincing as Adele, a woman whose pain isolates her from the world, and Griffith makes a credible adolescent, a young man who has become an accomplice in his mother's insistent isolation.

Once Reitman aligns our sympathies with Frank and Adele, the movie's major tension revolves around whether Frank will be caught. Will the couple be able to continue their strange romantic idyll, preferably beyond the reach of the law?

I won't spoil the ending, but there's another sort of tension here: the unease that derives from our knowledge of other films and maybe even from the real world. Suffice it to say that few films could take this kind of scenario and turn it into an affirmation of family, devotion and the power of love.

Reitman rounds out the stories of Adele and Frank with flashbacks that can be a bit confusing, and a couple of side trips turn out to be unimpressive: Henry meets a new girl in town (Brighid Fleming). Trouble arises when a neighbor leaves her handicapped son in Adele's care.

Look, families and other tightly knit groups have a way of manufacturing their own realities. Labor Day understands that, but -- in the end -- I had trouble buying a story about a likable convict and the woman whose emotional life he saves.

When the lights came up, I found myself asking whether what I'd been watching -- though well-crafted -- really made sense.

Theron conquers in 'Young Adult'

Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody reunite, but it's Charlize Theron who saves the day.

Young Adult begins in a high-rise apartment in Minneapolis, a building with the kind of one-bedroom apartments that have small terraces and that frequently are occupied by single people. Or maybe they're the kind of apartments people move into after a divorce.

One of those tenants -- Mavis Gary -- is lying face down in her bed, where she presumably wound up after drinking too much, something she does a lot.

As Young Adult unfolds, we learn that Mavis ghostwrites a once-popular but now fading series of books for young adult readers, the kind of tweens who've probably moved on to the Twilight books. Mavis is supposed to be writing the series' last book, but she's having difficulty because she's beginning to struggle with second thoughts about her life.

And it doesn't help that she's gotten an e-mail from her high-school sweetheart telling her that he and his wife have just had their first baby.

So Mavis packs a few things, and, in one of those rash decisions that could make sense only to her, drives back to her small Minnesota hometown to reclaim that erstwhile boyfriend.

Mavis thinks her task will be simple because she was (and still is) beautiful. Mavis and Minneapolis or dreary married life in Mercury, Minnesota? The choice, Mavis believes, is a no-brainer.

That's the backdrop for Young Adult, the latest collaboration between director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody, the duo that gave us Juno, a comedy about teen pregnancy.

Say this: Reitman and Cody are not shy about taking risks. They've built their movie around a character that’s both deluded and dislikable, but they've managed to hedge their bet because Mavis is played by Charlize Theron, who captures Mavis' haughty insensitivity, her budding alcoholism and her manipulative personality in spectacular, often funny fashion.

It never occurs to Mavis that Buddy might be happily married or that he and his wife (Elizabeth Reaser) might be seriously committed to each other and to their young family.

Only one of the town’s residents – a geek played by Patton Oswalt – seems to see through Mavis’ facade. Having suffered a vicious beating in high school (a group of thuggish jocks thought he was gay), he views himself as damaged goods. Oswalt’s Matt is willing to tell Mavis how appallingly she’s behaving, not that Mavis cares.

Some of Young Adult is funny and some if it is sad, but there's also a slight stuck-in-a-rut feeling about the movie. Reitman's last movie, Up in the Air, was richer and more entertaining, and Cody still hasn't shed all the self-consciously clever tics that were apparent in Juno. On top of all that, the movie's central focus -- Mavis' boundless narcissism -- can make Young Adult feel as narrow as Mavis' worldview.

Now, not all of Young Adult is easy to take. A scene toward the end is so ugly, it’s painful to watch. It’ s supposed to be that way, but it serves as a kind of exclamation point to what we already know: Mavis is a wreck of a woman, so misguided that even some of her best verbal jabs don't earn her much sympathy.

Most movies are about characters who struggle to come of age. This one pushes, maybe a bit too hard, against the grain by introducing us to a woman who hasn't come of age and perhaps never will.

Still, Young Adult remains watchable because Theron makes an amazing Mavis, a woman who's ready to be completely irresponsible with the lives of others. Oswalt also scores as Matt, a decent, self-aware guy who sees the cliff toward which Mavis relentlessly is driving. Not everyone will share Matt's concern for Mavis, and some may even hope that when the she reaches that cliff, someone pushes her off.