I had a lot of fun with Saturday Night, Jason Reitman’s film about the origins of television comedy institution Saturday Night Live. In many ways Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan set themselves an impossible task. Behind-the-scenes television stories are a challenge to make interesting for an audience, and in this case the story is riddled with very famous people indeed. It is a challenge for every biographical picture to cast and direct an actor to believably resemble their subject matter, and in Saturday Night every second character is based on someone visually recognisable – if not actively iconic.

In Reitman’s film, aspiring television producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) juggles a resentful crew, an anarchic cast, and a studio system that may be hoping for failure, in the 90 minutes leading up to the premiere of live sketch comedy series Saturday Night.

When asked about the accuracy of his 1962 western The Man Who Shot Liberty Vance, the noted director John Ford was quoted in saying ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend’. It is a philosophy that Reitman and Kenan’s screenplay takes to heart, and it is to my mind absolutely the correct approach for them to take. Saturday Night Live is one of the most widely documented television programmes ever made, and it is an easy task to run through their film and pick out the bits that are true from those that are merely allegedly true or those parts that likely never happened at all. What is true is that the development and release of the show was a process riddled with difficulties, and the smartest thing done here is the condensation of what was actually weeks of problems into a tight, urgent 90 minutes. It is inspired by actual events, and features real people among its characters, but Reitman sensibly puts story and entertainment first and relegates the truth to third place. It does not work perfectly every time – for one thing Muppet creator Jim Henson is thrown under a bus in the name of a few gags – but it works much better than a rigorously accurate account would have done.

It is probably a coincidence that Reitman’s direction so closely resembles that of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip director Thomas Schlamme. Schlamme’s 2006 television drama, created and written by Aaron Sorkin, attempted to make a behind-the-scenes drama out of a thinly veiled analogue of SNL, anmd both it and Saturday Night rely heavily on a constantly mobile, momentum-filled camera. It is such an effective way to make things feel urgent and suspenseful, even when the audience might otherwise question how urgent those things are.

The performances are largely very, very good, with actors either mimicking their real-life inspirations to a frightening degree – Dylan O’Brien’s Dan Aykroyd is uncanny – or capturing just the right flavour or cadence to make it work. It is a strong ensemble that only relies on big name talent in one or two places such as Willem Dafoe and J.K. Simmons. It is a broad group of actors here, but it is worth name-checking Rachel Sennott, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Nicholas Braun, and Cooper Hoffman.

I think there is definitely a risk of this kind of backstage comedy feeling a little too obtuse for its audience, and there is certainly a sort of self-congratulatory smirk about much of the film, but honestly I think a little self-congratulation is warranted. Watch the film’s recreation of SNL‘s first-ever sketch, and then go track down the actual sketch performed by John Belushi and Michael O’Donaghue. This is a film made with love, and a brilliant attention to detail.