There's never been an institution as consistently maddening as Saturday Night Live, at least when it comes to the movie business. They're reliable only in their impending mediocrity. The feature films spun from 5-minute skits are commonly limp and pointless, acting primarily as exercises to see how forgiving audiences can be (considering the number of spin-off films that exist, the answer to that is "very".) Why, it's almost as if these condensed little character studies weren't meant to be stretched to a feature-length runtime! But every once in a while, they manage to unearth a gem. It may be rare, but there have been a handful of movies inspired from SNL sketches that went on to great reverence, hitting a nerve with audiences, often in spite of themselves. These scarce nuggets of success at the multiplex is what propelled Lorne Michaels to continue striking out (in more ways that one) in more and more attempts to capture moviegoers' affection. And cash. Some movies on this list bear only the flimsiest connection to the comedy institution - the seeds of characters planted ever so faintly in the halls of Studio 8H - but ironically, those have typically proven to be the most successful of the bunch.
