Film Review: LORNE (2026): An Intriguing, Yet Lacking, Glimpse at the Man Behind SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
Lorne Review
Lorne (2026) Film Review, a movie directed by Morgan Neville, written by Alan Lowe, Jake Hostetter and Morgan Neville and starring Lorne Michaels, Chevy Chase, James Downey, Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey, Colin Jost, Steve Martin, Seth Meyers, John Mulaney, Mike Myers, Conan O’Brien, Chris Rock, Maya Rudolph, Andy Samberg, Sarah Sherman, Paul Simon, Robert Smigel and Kristen Wiig.
Saturday Night Live was recently the subject of a 2024 mainstream movie, Saturday Night. Just two years after the film that chronicled the opening night of the hit television variety show, a documentary from filmmaker Morgan Neville, Lorne, has been released. This new movie zeroes in on producer Lorne Michaels and his techniques of keeping the long-running show both fair to the artists who appear on it and successful as an exemplary business model. Neville’s picture is a bit too long and doesn’t always dig deep inside the life of Michaels. Instead, it chooses to explore the talent that Michaels worked with over the years, and the result is an informative picture that doesn’t cut very deep into the actual subject it explores – Michaels, himself.
One interesting scene deals with the fact that the show hit rock bottom in 1995 with Adam Sandler and Chris Farley among those who were fired from Saturday Night Live. It’s a revelation that the show was in that much trouble at one point. Even though I may have read about it 30 years ago, the way the show had to be re-imagined for future generations proved to be a really interesting part of this new documentary.
As the show started to highlight talent like Will Ferrell and Maya Rudolph, it became quite a bit different from the show that premiered in the mid-1970’s. According to at least one or two people interviewed for the film, the show had to change to remain on the air as it did in the mid-1990’s.
The problem with Lorne is that Lorne Michaels is made out to be a saint, and we don’t know much about what made him “tick” when he wasn’t doing the show. Even when he stepped away from the program, he apparently didn’t suffer too much. They show him sitting by the phone in cartoon form, eventually receiving a phone call to come back five years later. What did he do besides sit around for five years? Inquiring minds may want to know. He allows potential sketch material to be read by the show’s stars from beginning to end before it is rejected to give the talent a fair shot at getting their material the attention it may deserve. Michaels was a really nice guy, but one wonders why he never left the show again. Did he have any big financial responsibilities that kept him there or he just simply loved working for NBC? I couldn’t tell you, definitively, after seeing this documentary.
This film does do a few things really well, however. It shows Chris Rock, Conan O’Brien, Tina Fey and other big stars being interviewed. These discussions bring into light some of the things that made Lorne Michaels so admirable, but the film never truly gets inside Michaels the way the great recent documentary, Marc by Sofia, got insides its subject, Marc Jacobs. It’s hard to compare two different styles of films, but one is truly exceptional and one is merely passable. Lorne being the latter one.
There’s interaction with Paul Simon, a good friend of Michaels, and also footage of the legendary SNL producer, Michaels, with Steve Martin. The best things that come out of those scenes is that we learn Michaels worked out at Simon’s apartment and that Michaels likes spaghetti bolognese. These two facts don’t shed much insight on Michaels’ motivations to be always at the center of Saturday Night Live. Michaels is said to have a humorous side in the new documentary, but it rarely comes out on-screen.
Lorne is better for fans of SNL than for commonfolk. Michaels produced movies like Three Amigos and the original Mean Girls. Saturday Night Live was his baby, though, from the time he was 30 until now. He is about 80 years of age these days. We don’t see why he stayed so loyal for the 50 or so years he remained attached to SNL.
That being said, Lorne offers fans of the show a great deal of footage from old shows and interviews with stars who have appeared on the program over the years. We know why things were cut from the show and what happened at times like when Sinead O’Connor ripped up the picture of the pope on the air.
Lorne Michaels is said to be a genuine family man. However, his family’s faces are covered in the footage that shows them in Lorne. This is still a proficient film from a technical standpoint, but, unfortunately, it leaves the audience wondering much more about Michaels than he and the film wanted to share.
Rating: 6/10
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