Every Movie Based On A Saturday Night Live Sketch - Ranked From Worst To Best

4. A Mighty Wind

From their initial appearance on Saturday Night Live to their full-fledged mockumentary, A Mighty Wind, 19 years had passed. That's an incredibly long time to nurture and/or sit on an idea, especially when we're talking about an idea related to SNL. So it was probably a wise choice for director Christopher Guest to distance the film from its roots and place the focus instead on its continuation in Guest's string of beloved mockumentaries, most notably This Is Spinal Tap. Most of the core components of the film debuted in a 1984 sketch that involved The Folksmen reuniting (also the basic premise for the film), and Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michale McKean even sang snippets of the songs they fleshed out for the movie. But whereas This Is Spinal Tap had only the loosest of premises - ageing rock stars fall out of favour with the public and struggle to keep the band together - A Mighty Wind has a strong, tightly-crafted storyline. And that lets the assembled collection of talented improv performers (including usual suspects Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, and John Michael Higgins) stretch their legs and sink into their roles. It's more focused than any traditional, SNL-produced feature film, and that's because Christopher Guest has a greater mind for cinematic comedy than Lorne Michaels. It's also about a thousand times more joyful.