Rating: TV-MA | Runtime: 128 minutes
Release Date: January 27th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: National Broadcasting Company (NBC)
Director(s): Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson & Oz Rodriguez

SNL’s musical legacy is the incredible opportunity it gives artists and the early belief in them.

The first seven-minutes of this are phenomenal. Following up his Oscar-winning footage-scouring documentary Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Questlove (alongside Oz Rodriguez) delivers a rousing remix of fifty years of songs by layering and cutting two or more performances together from the annals of “Saturday Night Live” history for a time capsule of musical genius. What an electric, invigorating feat.

It’s easy to ride that high through the rest of Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music, but also to realize just how pedestrian the rest feels. Because this is a television documentary. The final runtime is 128-minutes despite airing as a 180-minute broadcast. That’s a lot of commercials. And the sheer number of bumpers to accommodate (which aren’t edited out in the streaming version) grinds everything to a staccato halt of YouTube-ready vignettes with little to no cohesive movement from one “chapter” to the next.

The result is still very good, though. Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, and Dave Grohl talking about “Punk Band Reunion At The Wedding”. The behind-the-scenes accounts of protest acts from Sinead O’Connor and Rage Against the Machine (Tom Morello tells all about what should have happened on-stage and what did happen backstage) and boundary-pushing acts from Elvis Costello and Fear. The Kanye West debacle. Lonely Island’s origins. The good times, bad times, unforgettable times. It’s all here.

It’s just hard not to wonder what could have been if the format allowed that initial energy from the opening prologue to continue all the way to the end.

Also: how dare they cut Daniel Craig’s intro before hearing “The Weeknd.”

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LADIES & GENTLEMEN… 50 YEARS OF SNL MUSIC key art courtesy of NBC Universal.