Lorne Film Review: Live from New York…

While Morgan Neville’s Lorne has admirable intentions, it feels more like a puff piece on Michaels’ genius than an exploration of who he is.

In fact, this mostly chronological, talking-heads-filled documentary feels more like a self-congratulatory puff piece, because each person being interviewed, whether they have worked or are currently working for Michaels, says something along the lines of “Isn’t Lorne just the greatest?!?” Maybe he is, but I didn’t have that opinion before watching the movie, and I certainly don’t have it after viewing a documentary that refuses to illuminate us on such a legendary icon. 

Neville does warn us, through the artifice of a voice-over narration from Chris Parnell, that Lorne likes to keep things to himself and doesn’t want to talk about his private life, which is entirely within his rights to do so. However, it still doesn’t justify the lack of a narrative throughline that would make this documentary feel somewhat informative. A good (or great) documentary, whether it’s the traditional talking heads or something more form-blurring, needs to have a central question or hypothesis at its heart that might provide audiences with a different outlook on the subject matter at hand that they might not have had before viewing the movie. 

Last month, Focus Features released Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrrell’s The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, which did exactly that. It wasn’t perfect, but it was at least full of tons of insight into an ever-evolving subject. Did it change my perception on the subject of Artificial Intelligence, or did it provide clarity on a topic that few of us have actively taken time to research before having a strong opinion about it? Yes. Does Lorne accomplish anything in that same ilk? Not really, even if Neville’s question is much easier than “What is AI?” 

“Who is Lorne Michaels?” can encompass many things: who is the myth? Who is the human? Who is the successful movie producer, screenwriter, and creator behind one of the most foundational late-night programs in the history of television? And who is he beyond his contributions to media? Who knows, because Neville never answers any of his questions, or gives us a sense that these questions are unanswerable. It’s “Lorne Michaels is the Greatest Human Being on Earth: The Movie.” A flawless person who is basically God and whom everyone loves. 

When Michael Che says, “When Lorne Michaels laughs at your joke, you know you’ve got something,” one wonders what that means to the people who contribute to Saturday Night Live other than “God laughed at my joke.” When Paul Simon makes up a story about Lorne’s childhood that has been inaccurately reported in plenty of credible media outlets, one wonders why this event is being told and how it feeds the persona of the titular figure, who has always been very quiet about showing emotion and even talking about his own life before Saturday Night changed it all for him. 

It’s a movie that attempts to interrogate who Lorne Michaels is without actually caring about him in the first place. He’s almost second fiddle to the whole thing, while various interlocutors, such as Bill Hader, John Mulaney, Andy Samberg, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Colin Jost, Bowen Yang, Tina Fey, Sarah Sherman, Maya Rudolph, and Jimmy Fallon (to name a few), will lightly discuss things about Michaels, but never in a way that enlightens the audience or perhaps make us see him in a different way. Why is he a creature of routine, for example? Why won’t he retire? These subjects are brought to the fold, but never deeply explored or even examined. It feels like a half-baked commercial for Michaels rather than an actual documentary that might challenge audiences on the figure. 

We do get fleeting bits of information about Michaels and occasional glimpses of humanity that might give us a slight sense of the past that informs his present life and behavior, but nothing tangible. It’s all in the service of telling us how grand a person he is, without the texture that would make a documentary like this as powerful as Neville’s most well-known movie, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

We seem very far away from such a powerful documentary, especially considering that the only thing I was moderately engaged with on screen was the multiple archival clips of some of SNL’s best skits, such as the stunt baby or the late, great Norm MacDonald defying NBC’s orders and joking about the then CEO Dan Ohlmeyer’s friendship with O.J. Simpson. Watching these moments again – on the big screen, no less – made me laugh so hard, but I can’t say the same for any of the interactions we have with Lorne, or the star-studded ensemble of talking heads that populate the documentary. 

It’s an empty, vacuous affair devoid of any real insight and interrogation on its main subject. Neville falls short on almost every conceivable aspect and delivers a documentary that barely acts like one. It might just be as reprehensible as his Anthony Bourdain biopic, but at least that one said something about the figure it talked about, while Neville’s latest exploration of a popular media icon has nothing of interest to say…

Lorne is now available to watch in theaters in the U.S. and Canada.