Review Roundup: SNL's 40th Anniversary Special

Saturday Night Live's 40th anniversary special had everything: New sketches featuring old friends. Remade classic bits. Crowd-pleasing montages. And more than 20 million viewers. SNL's 40th Anniversay Special is currently NBC's top-rated primetime entertainment telecast, excluding post-Super Bowl programs, in 11 years since Jan. 25, 2004 (8.5 in 18-49, 23.4 million from 7-11 p.m. on the night of the Golden Globes)

"Saturday Night Live," NBC's Emmy Award-winning late-night comedy showcase, enters its 40th season in September for another year of laughs, surprises and great performances.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Jeremy Gerard, Deadline: In a calm, quivering sea of nostalgia desperate for a few shark alerts, Bill Murray's raucous reprise of his SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE lounge singer sparked some life into what was actually SNL 40, a celebration that ranged, predictably, from mawkish to absurd, shocking good (several newer cast members proved themselves deserving of a roost on the SNL Valhalla, a running joke that Jon Lovitz is dead) to shocking bad (when did Eddie Murphy morph into a sleek Beverly Hills avatar? When was the last time Chevy Chase saw his knees?) and even to a shocking instance of un-political correctness: a very funny compilation of SNL audition tapes featured Jim Carrey swiveling his hips while waving fake teeny arms as "Post-Nuclear Elvis."

Brian Lowry, Variety: The youthful "Saturday Night Live" surely would have mocked something as bloated as the 40th anniversary special that NBC aired (about eight months early, but never mind) on Sunday, running a ponderous 3 ½ hours, not including the one-hour "Matt Lauer really will do anything the network asks these days" red-carpet preshow. Star studded and nostalgic, the telecast demonstrated the network's determination to milk all things "SNL" beyond the BREAKING POINT creatively speaking, as well as the media's willingness to treat another arbitrary milestone like an event. To paraphrase the Church Lady, sorry, but this just wasn't that special.

John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter: Studio 8H was a friends-and-family zone tonight, with an audience composed of former castmembers, hosts and friends of the show. Rather than having a single emcee, producers trotted out a slew of veterans - not just in the 10-car pileup of an opening "monologue," where frequent hosts Steve Martin and Tom Hanks vied with less experienced colleagues, but throughout the show. Over the course of the evening, presenters includingRobert De Niro and Jack Nicholson would read stiff, short speeches that reminded us of this or that aspect of the show's cultural impact, be it SNL's abiding political-satire bent (cue a montage of iconic presidential impersonations) or

Sandra Gonzalez, Mashable: A gold medal goes to everyone who just completed the comedy marathon that was Saturday Night Live's 40th Anniversary special. Clocking in at three and a half hours, the much-touted celebration of the television institution was, indeed, something of a labor of love to watch, and, one has to imagine, a labor of love to put together. But it was exactly that good will - that fondness and respect that the guests and former cast members in attendance have for SNL - that powered the Sunday night special's best moments. A prime example: The first sketch of the night was overseen by Dan Aykroyd, who resurrected his fast-talking pitch man to sell us the Super Bass-O-Matic 2051 - a throwback to Season 1 of SNL. Aykroyd's energy and pure joy for being back on stage shone through - even when his blender failed to do its only job. (Live TV!) Aykroyd, who would come back on stage later for a Blues Brothers sketch alongside Jim Belushi, set a bar for the rest of the night: Let's have some fun.

Kevin Fallon, Daily Beast: There are very few times that you can say you are watching indisputable brilliance, or witnessing history happen right before your eyes. But Sunday night's special was just that, with 40 years of cast members and guests from what might be TV's seminal cultural institution gathered in one room to perform, pay homage, and sear into our memories-through their bliss to just be in the room and talent that bounded out of it-why comedy has been and will always be important. It was a night of sketch comedy that not even Taylor Swift could ruin. Though girlfriend sure did try.

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