If there’s a word that best describes Questlove ‘s herculean effort to encapsulate the entirety of five decades of Saturday Night Live ‘s musical legacy in one three-hour-long documentary, it’s diligence.

That’s on full display just in the first six minutes of the film, which debuts with an extensive cold open mashing up decades of performances by everyone from Billy Preston to Sabrina Carpenter, Gwen Stefani to Run-DMC and Dave Matthews Band to Queen, the whole number cohesively mixed to work with one another.

“It’s literally taking note of every musical moment, every note,” Questlove (real name, Ahmir Thompson) tells THR as he hands over his phone to reveal a seemingly endless scroll of memos detailing genre, keys and tempo. The cold open took about 11 months to make. The notes w

See Full Page