by Tim Brayton
The Academy Awards are meant to reward great acting, not provide examples of it, but for a couple minutes during Sunday's ceremony, I'm convinced I saw the best comic performance I'll see for the rest of 2019. When Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry arrived to present Best Costume Design in polyglot outfits designed to evoke all five of the nominees, the visual gag is already enough. In a different year or with a lazier duo it might have been all we got. But it's when McCarthy and Henry start to introduce the category that it went from silly to downright inspired.
I am obsessed with every bit of what McCarthy is up to in that clip – and it doesn't even include the best joke of the bit, when she has the bunny attack Henry's hand as he tries help her open the envelope. Part of it, of course, is that she's playing things so completely straight...
There she is, bedecked head to to with stuffed rabbits (which was, apparently, primarily her own idea), and she doesn't break even a tiny bit. She looks with unabashed, almost monotonous earnestness at the crowd as she praises the subtlety of costume design, and right at the end of the clip as she repeats "so true" to the crowd, as though admonishing them for laughing, that little head nod is a flawless capper.
But anybody can play a silly routine straight. What pushes this goofy, goofy gag into the stratosphere is how smart McCarthy turns out to be as a puppeteer. Look at the bunny – really watch it. It's not just wiggling around being a silly sight gag. It's an aware character, interacting with the presenters. At 0:28 in the above clip, it cocks its head to listen more closely to Henry, and nods enthusiastically in agreement. Once McCarthy starts speaking about "never distracting" (an obvious irony, but a funny one), it keeps nodding, but with less enthusiasm, more thoughtfulness and contemplation. As it starts to grasp her point, it spins around to look at her, nodding faster. All while McCarthy stands rock steady, not visibly flexing her arm at all, and never so much as flickering her gaze down to make sure she's doing it right.
Stupid bunny gags can be funny for a moment. But taking the care to make the bunny a character? That's where hilarity comes in. Memorably amusing Oscar presenter bits are always welcome, but for my tastes, this one has already entered the pantheon of the greatest skits in the ceremony's history. McCarthy might have walked away without an award on Sunday, but as far as I'm concerned, those two minutes are all she needs to mount a strong campaign for Best Supporting Actress of 2019.