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There are ample reasons to go see Ghostbusters: supporting women, supporting quality comedy, supporting anything that isn't Pokémon Go. But there’s only one that matters: bearing witness to the ascension of Kate McKinnon.
A few poorly misguided reviews aside, McKinnon—and her ever-morphing facial expressions and dance moves—is the saving grace of *Ghostbusters. *It's a performance so utterly weird and nuanced you can’t not watch it. Seriously. There's no way to know what goes on in Kate McKinnon’s brain, but if the things her face and body do when she’s ad-libbing with her co-stars or dancing to DeBarge in this movie are spur-of-the-moment things, she might be the most naturally funny person on the planet.
Yes, in a movie filled with three other very funny leads—Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Leslie Jones—that’s a bold statement. But here’s the thing: McCarthy, Wiig, and (to a lesser degree) Jones are giving the kind of performances you’d expect. Their schtick is high quality, but they've also done it before. What McKinnon brings to Holtzmann is a sui generis abandon that's simply indescribable. She’s part mad scientist, part super freak, and all heart. Not kidding about that last part; there’s no crying in Ghostbusters, but the one almost-monologue McKinnon gets is the only time you might feel an actual feeling.
To borrow a line from Tracy Jordan on 30 Rock: her style is like jazz. Jazz you laugh at. It feels mostly improvised and seems not to follow a single method or melody. One minute she’s crawling her spider fingers up McCarthy’s shoulder, the next she’s eating Pringles (she calls them “salty parabolas”) while watching a ghost ecto-vomit onto Wiig. It almost doesn’t make sense, but then when it’s over, you realize it was beautiful—and you can probably enjoy it many times over before you catch every nuance. (Feig, will you be releasing a Kate Cut on the Ghostbusters Blu-ray? Because you should.) Also, she does shit like this:
What’s most impressive is that McKinnon does all of this while having the least material to work with. Unlike McCarthy and Wiig, who play old-friends-turned-aversaries-turned-friends-again, and Jones, whose Patty is an MTA worker who solicits herself a membership to the Ghostbusters, Holtzmann’s main job is to be the de facto Egon Spengler, making crazy contraptions and then describing them in wild-eyed detail. She also gets to make passes at her colleagues, giving the whole affair the kind of homoerotic-tension-breaking joie de vivre the original sorely lacked. (It’s a shame, though, that director Paul Feig has been so wink-wink about whether or not Holtz is actually a lesbian. Her being queer wouldn't make a bit of difference to the plot while making a huge difference for LGBTQ visibility in movies.)
And bringing that levity and joy to Ghostbusters is exactly what McKinnon needed to do. She's the wild card of the crew. She seems to have gone in knowing that she wasn’t one of the Big Two of this movie, and her performance comes off as a wonderful tribute to the memory of Harold Ramis and his Spengler. Not everyone will understand the strange directions she takes Holtz in, but being untouchably weird is where McKinnon excels, whether she’s talking about aliens playing with her “knockers,” starring in “Dyke and Fats,” or doing all the dongs in the world.
Just yesterday, McKinnon was nominated for an Emmy for her work on Saturday Night Live. It’s the third time she’s been nominated, and if there’s any justice in the world this might be the year she wins. (Sorry, Niecy Nash.) But, like so many SNL-ers before her, her future may be movies. She saves Ghostbusters from itself. And if Hollywood ever needs someone to rescue another ensemble, now they know who to call.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6nhYEe-YUY
