MacGruber Review Thread (Use Spoiler Tags)

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by thedarkangel1975

The problem with SNL is easy. The show has not been funny in almost 15 years.

And the reason for that is, the original '74-'79 show's idea was to capture underground improv-sketch groups in a bottle, and recruited its members from the Toronto and Chicago Second City's.
Nowadays, it's become some "Apprentice"-like race to see which of the writers has "the stuff" to promote his way up to The Next Big Performer--like Conan O'Brien and Mike Myers did--but all they've got now are performers who know how to write sketches about one line or mannerism shtick repeated over and over.

(...But it was still the Groundlings that gave us Phil Hartman. )

They need to releazie why Skits work as skits and not as movies. Hence why Its Pat, Anything Will Ferrell, The Coneheads, don't work as movies.

First of all, "It's Pat" wasn't a "real" SNL movie.
(It was just an indie-burp that got picked up and dumped by Disney, hoping they'd leech onto whatever Paramount tapped into with Wayne's World.)

Second, that flood of SNL movies we got in the 90's (Superstar, Night at the Roxbury) was a pre-arranged deal between Lorne and Paramount/Viacom/NBC-before-Universal-bought-them:
NBC wanted new sitcoms just like "NewsRadio" and "Just Shoot Me", which Lorne's production company delivered, and Lorne Michaels wanted to build a production company, but didn't own any intellectual property outright except SNL--
So, all new SNL writers were told that their prime-directive output was now to create new running characters....Characters which would become the sole-rights property of SNL Productions, which could mandatorily draft its star into a feature project at their discretion. Also, performers would have to accept one of three NBC pilot scripts sent their way (based on their breakout "popularity" in the movies, you see.)

And so that's why Will Ferrell and everyone else left the show, new performers don't stay around more than one or two years, Lorne produces every Tina Fey script for bigscreen, and he's still trying to push Amy Poehler into a sitcom or at least convince us that "Parks & Recreation" is an actual hit.
Just in case you ever wondered.