MOVIE REVIEW: “SATURDAY NIGHT” (R)

“Saturday Night” is one of those films that I really want to love but try as I might, I simply don’t. A shame because I’m a fan of director Jason Reitman. I count “Thank You For Smoking” as his strongest film and I’m also quite fond of “Juno” and “Young Adult.” Heck, I’m even a big-time supporter of the divisive “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” which, despite a little too much fan service, really hit the sweet spot for me. I wish the same could be said for “Saturday Night.”

The events in “Saturday Night” take place within the chaotic and somewhat tumultuous 90-minute time frame leading up to the very first Saturday Night Live broadcast which occurred five long decades ago. That opener would ultimately pave the way for what is arguably the most influential sketch comedy show of all time. In fact, it’s still on air to this very day. Those on hand for that most historic night on October 11th, 1974, included showrunner Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) and SNL players, John Belushi (Matt Wood), Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Jane Curtain (Kim Matula), Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn), and Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien.) just to name a precious few.

A solid cast here to be sure and by and large, these performers all look the part (especially O’Brien.) Additionally, they do sometimes manage to evoke the spirit of their SNL counterparts but since this movie is structured as a real-time series of events, it often feels like we’re observing shadowy reflections of these performers rather than the performers themselves, particularly where iconic SNL players like John Belushi are concerned.

The very idea of a 90-minute ramp up to the very first 90-minute live SNL broadcast is a clever and creative one but too much of this film feels forced and inauthentic. What’s more, it’s not really as intense as one would hope. It’s clear that director Reitman and his right-hand man, co-writer Gil Kenan, are going for a colorful, high-energy Aaron Sorkin-esque vibe but ultimately, the end result is a mixed bag.

It should also be noted that “Saturday Night” often paints some of its key players in an unflattering and mean-spirited light and while I’m sure there was plenty of bad behavior and conflict going on, the movie might have benefitted from showcasing a little more of a joyful side as well. I recognize that some of this stuff coming across as hyper-real is by design but still, the balance is off. And this goes beyond the smug and assholish depiction of Chase, which if I’m being honest, wasn’t all that surprising given some of the things that have been written and said about the man through the years.

More problematic is the fashion in which legends like Jim Henson are depicted. He’s portrayed as an uptight dork and that felt disingenuous at best (even by comedy standards), particularly after watching the recent documentary, “Jim Henson: Idea Man.” Likewise, Milton Berle comes across as an arrogant gangster type and while this legend was known for being a bit prickly in real life, he was also a beloved personality referred to as Mr. Television. It would have been nice to see a little of that. Still, JK Simmons is pretty damn funny in the role.

For all of its flaws, “Saturday Night” isn’t without its moments and Reitman, Kenan and crew are to be commended for keeping the proceedings brisk and for making sure they kept the run time under 2 hours. That being said, perhaps the biggest compliment I can pay this hit-and-miss tribute to the old school SNL, is that I’d much rather watch it than any full episode of “Saturday Night Live” from the last 5 years and that’s certainly saying something.  

Have you ever heard of “Middle Book Syndrome”? For those who haven’t heard of it, this phrase accompanies complaints that the installment had no point: nothing happened, the characters went in circles, and the plot only served to get to the third book. Well, Venom: The Last Dance manages to get this syndrome while being the final film in this trilogy. And that’s not a good start to a review of a character that I love in comic books and other media.

Title: Venom: The Last Dance
Production Company: Columbia Pictures, Marvel Entertainment, Arad Productions, Matt Tolmach Productions, Pascal Pictures, Hutch Parker Entertainment, and Hardy Son & Baker
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Releasing
Directed by: Kelly Marcel
Produced by: Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, Amy Pascal, Kelly Marcel, Tom Hardy, and Hutch Parker
Written by: Tom Hardy & Kelly Marcel
Starring: Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu, Clark Backo, and Alanna Ubach
Based on: Venom by Todd MacFarlane & Marvel Comics
Release dates: October 25, 2024
Running time: 109 minutes
Rating: PG

From The Void…

Venom: The Last Dance Story Summary – SPOILERS

Story Review – Some Vague Spoilers

This is the third time I’ve reviewed a Venom movie, with the first movie being favorable for an origin film, then the follow-up of Venom: Let There Be Carnage saw a slight dip on the Venom side of things, only to be saved by the Carnage side of things. Walking out of Venom: The Last Dance… I felt nothing. All I could think while watching Venom go from Horror/Action film to Comedy was this clip from The Godfather III:

I felt like they just took what should have been one of the most violent, aggressive, action-packed characters in comic books and turned him into a bickering married couple who just wanted to do anything except admit their relationship failed and divorce.

There was a movie at some point, with the vague idea of a story. Adapting the beginning to “The King in Black”, while not my favorite Venom event storyline, is at least something that a movie should be able to do well on the big screen. However, the story just feels like bookends to something else that was shoved into the middle of the film to remind us that Symbiotes are a thing and have something to do with Venom… Who is off to the side bickering with Eddie while they make their way to the B plot while avoiding the A plot as much as possible… Then have a side trip to one of the most out there non-sensical “why the fuck are they doing this” moments in film history.

Venom: The Last Dance Partners.

• Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock / Venom:
  Where I once praised Tom Hardy for being the voice of Venom as well as the actor for Eddie, by the time I was halfway through Venom: The Last Dance I was begging for it all to end. What started as “Eddie goes crazy” had become a bickering married couple, and not in a funny way. Eddie spends the majority of the film complaining. Then in the final moments, instead of connecting and feeling sad about Venom, I was almost glad because it meant the movie was almost over… and so did others as people started clapping as if it was the end of the movie.
• Chiwetel Ejiofor as Rex Strickland:
  Typical Military guy who goes power mad as he just wants to defend the world against the evil aliens who are invading and you can’t change my mind. When he does get that power, it instantly backfires on him and everything goes crazy, leading to a last-minute trust of the aliens and doing one thing to save everyone from the threat in the end. Very trope-style in acting and character.
• Juno Temple as Dr. Teddy Payne & Clark Backo as Sadie Christmas:
  I sum these two up as “Dr. Inclusion” and “Dr. Diversity”. They are two scientists, one of which has a “dead” arm due to a lightning strike hitting her shoulder (Dr. Payne), and the other who wears a Christmas Tree pin all the time because her last name is Christmas (It’s a joke… GET IT?!). Both of them spend most of their time looking longingly at the captured symbiotes like they want to make out with them and say that the symbiotes are good creatures who are running from something. They do get their wishes of being covered by symbiotes in the last act of the film, with Dr Payne getting to keep her symbiote (who doesn’t have a name, none of them do), while Christmas loses hers in battle. Meh.
• Stephen Graham as Patrick Mulligan:
  If you don’t remember Mulligan from Venom: Let There Be Carnage, then I don’t blame you. The scientists infect him with one of the symbiotes in order to keep him alive and use his body to communicate with the symbiote. He adds nothing to the plot except to give all the women who want to fuck something that looks like a monster a thing to get wet over.
• Peggy Lu as Mrs. Chen:
  She’s back in one of the most pointless cameos ever. I’m sure she was included because someone writing this shit loved her, or some idiots online created some theory about how she is the center of the Venom movies. Mrs. Chen shows up to give Eddie a moment to fix himself up, leading to “that dance scene” that killed the film completely.
• Andy Serkis as Knull:
  Ok, first of all, Serkis as Knull nails the aura of that big bad evil guy who is a threat to the world PERFECTLY. All he does is sit on a throne, covered in symbiote “ropes”, and talk about how he is going to fuck the whole universe over when he gets free and it WORKS. It’s a shame that we will probably not get a follow-up to anything he does and this epic-looking guy is going to be remembered as nothing more than bookends to one of the worst Superhero movies since Steel.

It’s Good If You Wanted A Comedy

If you try to look at Venom: The Last Dance in the same way you looked at Venom or Venom: Let There Be Carnage, then you’re going to miss what this film trilogy has become. Instead of the Lethal Protector, you get a man who is annoyed with having to do anything at all and an alien who wants to eat brains all the time and make shitty references that make no sense.

Venom: The Last Dance is a comedy movie, and if you think it’s an action or adventure movie then you have blinders on. That being said, if you view it in the same vein as The Odd Couple, a TV show that maybe 3 people besides me remember, then it is not too bad. Venom’s wisecracks land with a chuckle, and a few actual laughs at times. The sillier moments could be forgiven with this mindset too.

It’s hard to find praise for Venom: The Last Dance as I just feel numb to the movie, almost forgetting about 90% of it as I want to keep my original love and view of Venom and his adventures in New York… And yes, he finally gets to New York, and not once do they mention Spider-Man, not that he would save this shitshow of a movie.

We did get to see a little bit of blood and gore for a PG-rated film, something that this trilogy should never have been rated after Deadpool was a thing. Seeing Venom bite the heads off some villains was a step forward from the first film, but without any blood spurting, it just felt like the effects were forgotten and the edge of the scene was lost. PG rating for Venom should never have been a thing and it is one of the main things that should have been addressed by now.

Too Many Symbiotes in the Kitchen

The King in Black is a large and epic storyline that brings in all of Marvel’s roster in order to take down Knull, and with Venom being a forced stand-alone movie trilogy, there is ZERO chance that we will see Venom interact with anyone from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Hell, they start the movie by ripping Venom out of that specific universe just to make sure that the viewer knows that there is no hope at all for a Spider-Man cameo or anything to happen in these movies.

That being said, using Knull makes Venom: The Last Dance feel like there is still one more film to go, but since his scenes are the opening of the film and then a mid-credits scene, there doesn’t feel like there was a point to having him in Venom: The Last Dance at all, even to create a reason for the Xenophages to hunt Venom down.

Venom: The Last Dance stuffers from ADHD, as in it cannot focus correctly for more than 5 seconds. Venom spends the majority of the film making his way to Las Vegas, which just happens to be near the real focus of the movie: Area 55, a hidden underground version of Area 51 where Dr Inclusion and her assistant Dr Diversity spend a lot of time looking at a returning character from Venom: Let There Be Carnage as he becomes the main character from something that can only be described as one of those Monster Fucker “Romance novels” that fill your local book shop these days. Venom: The Last Dance is an internet degenerate’s wet dream in most ways with these Scientists and their many floating space-goo monsters.

Then there is “that dance scene” aka The Last Dance as mentioned in this movie. When Venom/Eddie makes it to Las Vegas, after knocking out a drunk guy and stealing his suit (Let’s just forget that Venom can MIMIC CLOTHING! aka one of the many abilities that the writers forgot about over THREE FUCKING MOVIES!), he encounters Mrs Chen, the store clerk from the other two films who just happens to have won so much in the Casino that she has the Penthouse Suite, leading to her and Venom dancing to the ABBA song “Dancing Queen”… Well, a remix of it anyway. This scene is the point where my excitement of anything good happening died completely.

Sure, we got the big explosive action-filled final act, but by that time the damage had been done. People were getting bored, so bored that we noticed a bunch of people walking out of the film to go to the bathroom, get more popcorn, or just walk around to do anything but fall asleep in the theater chairs. When the credits started to roll, I had never seen a theater room empty so fast with people complaining about how they wasted time and money on a sub-par film.

Venom: The Last Dance… Thank God For That

My wife and I had a discussion about Venom as a trilogy of films now that it has been completed, and the conclusion we came to was that Venom: The Last Dance should have been called something different, then it could have been used to set up Carnage and Knull for the third film. We agreed that Sony blew its load too quickly with Venom: Let There Be Carnage as anything that came afterward would not be able to handle the standard that came from Carnage showing up.

Venom: The Last Dance is not the ending I would have wanted for my favorite comic book character, not at all. Venom should have been going out swinging, taking down a world-ending threat like Knull instead of making a “noble sacrifice” of holding 4 to 5 Xenophages under an acid bath, which sounds more exciting than it looked on screen. The final scene of Eddie looking at the Statue of Liberty should have been the beginning of the real adventure of Venom, not the end of a trilogy that just got even more lost along the way.

I know what you’re thinking: A movie about a group of Cardinals electing a new pope? Do you have any paint I can watch dry while you’re at it?

But what if I told you that Edward Berger’s Conclave was one of the most exciting and best films of the year—a tense and beautifully shot procedural filled with intrigue, surprise twists, double-crosses, and almost incalculably high stakes.

Early in the film, the stage is set. The pope has died and while many high-ranking clergymen fuss over his death bed, only one seems to truly be in mourning. That’s the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), whom we find out later had recently tried to resign his post—without success. Maybe the pope knew he was going to die, Lawrence speculates, and he wanted someone he trusted running the conclave.

A conclave, for the uninitiated, is a special election of a new pope by the Cardinals. That deal with the smoke billowing out of the Vatican until we get a new pope? That’s the conclave.

And if you think it’s a peaceful and stress free process, may I direct your attention to HBO’s Succession?

Four candidates emerge early on. There’s Stanley Tucci’s Bellini, the self-described liberal of the group, who wants the Catholic church to continue its progress on social issues. There’s Adeyemi (Lucien Msamati), who would be the first Black pope, but has some skeletons in his closet. There’s the entertainingly loathsome Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), who vapes like he’s in some South Beach nightclub and believes that the Catholic Church should regress to its traditional ways—Latin liturgy, no women in the church, no gay marriage. (Tedesco makes the mistake of assuming Lawrence shares his values. When he casually mentions what a disaster it would be if Adeyemi becomes pope, Lawrence radiates with visible disgust.) Finally, there’s the seemingly mild-mannered Tremblay (John Lithgow), the moderate choice—but what to make of the rumors that the pope asked for his resignation shortly before he died?

As Dean, it falls on Lawrence to oversee the conclave, but there is a complicating factor—the cardinals are in lockdown, and therefore he has no access to outside information that might help him get to the bottom of the various rumors.

The first of many votes comes in and there are a few surprises: For one, Lawrence gets a few votes, even though he made it clear he wasn’t interested. Adeyemi is in the lead, with the other three main contenders fairly far behind. And there’s an even a more surprising vote bringing up the rear—for the humble Benitez (Carlos Biehz), a newcomer to the Vatican who had been serving a dangerous Catholic ministry in Afghanistan and had been secretly made a Cardinal by the pope.

The similarities to American politics, to all politics for that matter, are strictly intentional. Tucci’s Bellini pretends to be a reluctant candidate, but secretly craves the job. Tremblay is so blinded by ambition, he’s lost his moral compass. And as for Tedesco, his motto may as well be, “Make the Vatican Great Again.”

All the cardinals are so grasping they can hardly believe that Lawrence means it when he says he doesn’t want to be pope. They accuse him of secret ambition and sabotage, when he’s actually only seeking someone worthy of the job. (That said, he does have a papal name picked out: John. It’s that old aphorism about American politics: “Something happens to a man when he looks in the mirror and sees a president.”)

Although I was a fan of Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front, I found its score a little jarring (intentionally so, but still…). Here, the jangly and stuttering sounds of a string quartet perfectly enhance the tension. The film is shot beautifully in a recreated Vatican—all long halls, secret chambers, and light-filled sanctuaries. (The film’s recreation of Sistine Chapel is impeccable.) But there’s a sense of claustrophobia, too. The cardinals are perfectly cloistered. It might as well be the 17^th century up in there.

All the acting is top notch—Castellitto in particular is a riot—but Ralph Fiennes is nothing short of masterful as Lawrence, a good man caught in the maelstrom of these red-robed men and their outsized ambition, all while grieving the pope and suffering his own crisis of faith. And look for a quietly powerful Isabella Rossellini as the all-seeing and all-knowing Sister Agnes.

Conclave is gripping from beginning to end. It’s one of those movies that reminds you why you love movies.