SNL has been a part of my life since I could remember. My parents were the right against for it, as it debuted when my father was 36 and my mother was 26. They’d get us home from shopping just in time to watch it and I remember being so excited to be allowed to stay up, like some child adult and get to watch something no one else in school was allowed to.

As soon as the early 80s, when Newsday columnist Marvin Kittman said that the post-original Not Ready for Prime Time Players was Saturday Night Dead On Arrival, the show has been said to be worse than it was when it started. I’m not sure about that, although the quality has ebbed and flowed with today’s cast being as abysmal as it gets.

I’ve spent most of my life being obsessed with the show, how Lorne Michaels puts together episodes and its history, devouring almost every book published on the subject. I was excited when this movie was announced, but it has the danger of being too worshipful, too fawning over its subjects and probably trying to jam so much in to a short time.

And sure, that happens. It’s also a game of spot the writer or important person.

But for someone who has gone over the most small of details when it comes to this show, it’s also pretty great.

On October 11, 1975, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle, who already pretty much played Steven Spielberg in The Fablemans) has no time left to get the first episode of the show on the air. His boss Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman, Licorice Pizza) tells him that David Tebet (Willem Defoe), a high ranking NBC boss, is here to watch and will possibly just play a repeat of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson instead of allowing the show to play on NBC.

As for Carson, voiced by Jeff Witzke, he calls and lets Michaels know that late night is his place and that he’s fighting with NBC. As soon as he gets what he wants, the show will be off the air.

Despite all the pressures that Michaels is dealing with, he still has to get his cast on the air. Belushi (Matt Wood) is fighting with everyone and refuses to sign a contract; Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) is the brunt of his anger when he isn’t trying to keep Milton Berle (an incredible J.K. Simmons) away from his fiancee Jacqueline (Kaia Gerber). His writers are battling a censor (Catherine Curtin) while his host, George Carlin (Matthew Rhys) has no interest in even being there.

I don’t really believe that the show was saved at the last minute by Andy Kaufman (Nicholas Braun, who does great work here as Andy and Jim Henson) and the newly hired Alan Zweibel (Josh Brener), nor do I think anyone rallied around Garrett Morris (played by Lamorne Morris, no relation), despite the fact that they should have. It’s great to see him get such a part of this story, even if he was barely used on the show.

The nerd in me loved seeing how Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), Anne Beats (Leander Suleiman), Al Franken (Taylor Gray), Tom Davis (Mcabe Gregg), Dave Wilson (Robert Wuhl), Paul Shaffer (Paul Rust), Herb Sargent (Tracy Letts) and even Leo Yoshimura (Abraham Hsu) show up in this, but the best lines are saved for Michael O’Donoghue (Tommy Dewey). You know, they should be. My biggest comedy nerdom is saved for genuflecting before his anger and caustic tone.

Gilda (Ella Hunt), Danny (Dylan O’Brien), Laraine (Emily Fairn) and Jane (Kim Matula) all appear as well, even if their stories are barely fleshed out. Just like the show, this doesn’t have the time to get into them, although it does have Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) trying to get on the first show and failing.

Naomi McPherson shows up as Janis Ian, Jon Batiste — who also did the soundtrack — as Billy Preston and Brian Welch as Don Pardo, another major part of the feel of SNL to me. It feels like at times it’s just trying to pack things in, as I get the feeling that Jason Reitman, who directed and wrote the script with Gil Kenan, is as much of a super fan as me. That’s why Finn Wolfhard may play an unnamed NBC page, but we don’t see this through his eyes. Instead, we are with Lorne all the way until the end, when the words “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” end the movie and cue the credits, inverting their typical placement.

That said, if you are a big SNL nerd, you know that Belushi didn’t wait 39 seconds on live TV to show up in the first sketch or that Milton Berle didn’t host the show until Season 4. And there was no official host of the first episode. There wasn’t a host until episode 2 when Paul Simon appeared on the show. That’s also kind of like all the discussion if Rosie Shuster will use her husband Lorne’s last name in the credits and she picks her own. In truth, her name was Rosie Michaels on the show’s end titles.

These are all things that only nerds will understand. At best, SNL is something that works 40% of the time, at best, and even the greatest moments of the show are seen through the lens of what era you grew up in. As for the rest of, well, everyone, they’re probably watching this and wondering where Bill Murray was.