Rating: 
Summary: Not quite what you might expect
Review: After seeing most of the Saturday Night Live 25th Anniversary Show, including some of my favorite clips, I thought this would be a great DVD to have. I was somewhat surprised when I received my order that it contained only 1 disk. I wondered how a 4+ hour show could be condensed to one disk, but since it was DVD, anything was possible. The content on the disk is NOT the complete show. Many of the clips shown in their entirety where greatly shortened. While this is a nice remembrance of the 25th anniversary show, don't buy it thinking all of your favorite clips will be there whole.
Rating: 
Summary: This show was greatness in every way if you love SNL
Review: All that I can say is buy it now if you love SNL. So many greats made appearances such as Steve Martin, Dan Ackroid, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Sandler, Spade, and the list goes on. It's a SNL fans dream. Throw in numerous guest appearances, one from Jerry Seinfeld, and you definately get your money's worth. But the Icing on the cake would have to be the Beastie Boys/Elvis Costello combo on the song Radio, Radio, of course reinacting the original infamous incident. The Beasties start out on Sabatage, and Elvis comes out, stops the show once again, and you know the rest. Go Buy it now!
Rating:
Summary: Still crazy after all these years
Review: Amidst the perennial criticism of _Saturday Night Live_, it's easy to forget just how big an impact the show has had on our national artistic identity. This retrospective is a great place to begin that (re)discovery. Through its vast collection of clips from the show's 25-year run, one gains a real appreciation of the hundreds of colloquialisms, impressions, and comedic commentary this program has added to our national identity. What makes this show uniquely satisfying, however, is that it has significant original programming, including remarkable new material from Billy Crystal, Tom Hanks, Bill Murray, Mike Meyers, Robert Smeigel, various "Weekend Update" anchors, and the Eurythmics. There's also a fascinating montage on the production of a typical episode of SNL. True, this segment is in some ways cleverly-edited eye candy, but to my knowledge, it's the only SNL-produced filmed exposition of the backstage process at SNL. (There are three press bits on the DVD-version of the product which greatly amplify one's appreciation of the show, but SNL itself has still not produced a significant exploration of its own machinations.) It is a difficult thing, I would imagine, to make an anniversary show where so much material already exists. The temptation for Lorne Michaels was probably to air many more clips than his staff ended up including. For every bit that was included, there were at least five that I personally might have included as well. What Michaels and company were going for, though, was not an anthology, but an anniversary party. And that's what they ended up with. The show is in no way like the "Best of [insert performer's name here]" series that SNL has recently been releasing. You won't find this to be a exhaustive record of any aspect of the SNL experience. You won't even find that many complete sketches here. And you certainly won't discover anything but oblique references to the show's colorful off-screen history. Rather, _SNL 25_ very much feels as though they've gathered a few hundred of their closest friends (some of whom pointedly refused to show up) and have said "Hey, remember when we did this?" Happily, not only do we remember how good they were, this anniversary special lets us see how good they still are.
Rating: 
Summary: Mixed bag
Review: As with any collection or "greatest hits", it's very hard to make everybody happy. This SNL show is no exception to that rule. There are great moments in this DVD, such as the participation of Billy Crystal, the opening skit with Bill Murray, the Q&A with Tom Hanks and a couple of the salutes to the different casts. Although short, the memorials for John Belushi and Chris Farley were great, however, they would've been better if they'd used more than just one skit (Belushi's "Luck of the Irish" banter and Farley's interview of Paul McCartney). Gilda Ratner's and Phil Hartman's memorials were not really what they deserved. Also, there were a few missing castmembers, most specially Eddie Murphy, Dana Carvey, Christopher Guest and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Rating:
Summary: classic snl
Review: Being a semi-regular viewer of SNL, and having missed this when it was broadcast, I jumped at the chance to get it. It is classic SNL, from the begining with Bill Murray as a host at an Indian Casino, to the intro by Chris Rock who has the funniest line about SNL and movies, this is non-stop laughs. The show is broken up in 5 year segments with cast members from those years introducing them. There are retrospectives of the deceased cast members with touching intoductions, the best by Jon Lovitz, followed by a favorite skit. The Weekend Update with all the anchor's was great. The audience is star studded. A well done very enjoyable program. A fitting tribute to a show that has been on the air for 25 years. Billy Crystal is hilarious interviewing audience members.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Let The Beginning Throw You Off....
Review: Don't let the beginning throw you off. Yeah, it might want to make you shoot yourself, but trust me, it gets 110% better!!! Just skip the first chapter and everything will be A-okay! The way it works for the most part is that for every half decade or so they have a segment of SNL clips. Of course, some chapters are better then others, because from what I know, NBC was about to cancel the show in the 80's, it got so bad, but the show is chock full of classics, such as the Adam Sandler Songs, the Eddie Murphy classics (like "Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood"), and who could forget all those commercials? Some of the commercials shown are "Schmitt's Gay", "Cluckin' Chicken", and "Oops, I Crapped My Pants". There's even a "Behind the Scenes" roll which is awesome!!! Oh, I could ramble on about how great this DVD is all day! So, if you're a dedicated SNL fan, YOU JUST CAN'T GO WRONG WITH THIS DVD!!!! It's worth every cent!
Rating:
Summary: Sarah only please
Review: Haven't seen this DVD but this review mentioned in a negative way my favorite actress Sarah Michelle Geller & I would love to get a copy of Sarah's appearences on SNL. So what this reviewer wanted to avoid at least clued me to the possibility that I could here get the Sarah footage I wanted that he disliked. Sarah forever!
Rating:
Summary: A Funny Retrospective
Review: How many Saturday Night Live alumni can you think of right off the top of your head? How many of their skits can you remember? How many movie-spin offs? If you are like many Americans, you can probably rattle off many of these figures. After 25 years, it is quite an impressive resume. This 25th anniversary retrospective is filled to the brim with star power. From Chevy Chase to Molly Shannon, all generations of SNL personnel were represented in person, along with frequent guest-hosts like John Goodman and Steve Martin. You won't find your favorite skits in their entirety in this compilation, nor will you see the same tired episodes of the famous recurring characters. Instead, there are five extended montages of each five-year period since SNL's initial broadcast. The skits are edited down, but in many cases, that is a blessing - we all know that some of them go on a lot longer than they should. Along with these montages come the memorial segments. For each departed cast member, a skit highlighting his/her work was presented in its entirety. They were truly funny people. Also included in this retrospective were highlights from "Weekend Update" and some of the most memorable commercials. The funniest new moments of the evening came during Bill Murry's lounge style introduction, and Billy Crystal's "mavalus" chit chat. It is hard to work an audience of your peers, and they did it better than the rest. If you missed this when it was aired last fall, this is a must see.
Rating:
Summary: Good But Way Too Short...
Review: I agree with one of the reviewers that the DVD version is not what you would expect. The skits are shortened and edited rather quickly and it's dissapointing because some of the funniest moments in the skits are edited out for time. This amamzes me because it's DVD! They can fit as much as they want on it! If you're looking for a condensed version of the best skits of SNL, then get this disc. If you want to experience it in the full fashion, then wait. Maybe they'll release the best of SNL 26 years next year--hey, I can hope right!
Rating:
Summary: I liked the 20th anniversary show better...
Review: I didn't like this show as much as I thought I would, although I did still enjoy it. I appreciated that they took the time to honor the lesser-known SNL players who have since passed away (Michael O'Donoghue and Danitra Vance) as well as the famous ones (John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Phil Hartman, & Chris Farley). However, I thought the memorials for John, Gilda, Phil & Chris could have been better done. For example, in the 20th anniversary show, Dan Aykroyd & Jim Belushi spoke, and they showed clips of John's most famous and well-loved characters. This time around, it was Dan and Larraine Newman, who joked about selling Belushi stuff on eBay. The only clip was John's "luck of the irish" rant on Weekend Update. Granted, some of his other work was shown when they highlighted the cast from 1975-1980, but it still felt like a hastily done memorial. Gilda's memorial was along the same lines, being introduced by Molly Shannon and Cheri Oteri, and consisting of a Nerds sketch. Both women said some nice things about Gilda being a groundbreaker for female comedians.
The memorials for Phil and Chris were more heartfelt (Jon Lovitz for Phil and David Spade for Chris), almost to the point of being difficult to watch, because the intros were so emotional. The wounds from these two recent (at the time) and sudden deaths have obviously not healed, and it seemed a shame to make their friends and colleagues tearfully mourn their friends on live TV. Moving on to the musical guests...SNL has had many, many famous acts over the years, but instead of being shown clips from the best known and/or most notorious, there were instead performances by the Eurythmics, the Beastie Boys, and others who don't spring to mind, because they were kind of lost in the shuffle of clips. The performances were good, don't get me wrong, but I think the show could have done more to acknowledge and highlight some of the other performances over the years. The patter of the various hosts who introduced the series of clips was, for the most part, funny, with many nods to the famous people in the audience. Some people didn't get enough to say (Steve Martin) and some people got way too much (Adam Sandler). That contributed to the uneveness of the program. It's fun to watch if you've been a long time fan, but it doesn't give as complete a history of the show as it should, or even as previous anniversary shows have done.
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