Molly Shannon throws her whole body at a joke, and then, in the smaller films of her later career, turns out to be just as willing to stand still and be sad. The studio comedies we have seen her in barely know she is there.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Molly Shannon in anything from the 1990s and you will see her hurl herself at the joke. The characters she built on Saturday Night Live, Mary Katherine Gallagher above all, were eccentric and awkward and came with catchphrases and physical stunts, and she did the stunts herself. She has said of that style, "I didn’t care if I cut myself or I made myself bleed. I did not give a s—. I looked at it like punk rock. I was reckless." It shows. The comedy is not in the line but in the pratfall after it.
She joined SNL in February 1995 as a featured player and stayed until 2001, by which point she was the longest-running female cast member the show had had. Superstar (1999) took Mary Katherine Gallagher to feature length, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) put her in a big studio comedy while she was still on the show. Then the career went quieter, partly by her own choice, and the parts changed. From the mid-2000s there was more drama and more voice work: Year of the Dog (2007) for Mike White, Other People (2016) for Chris Kelly, and Wanda in the Hotel Transylvania films for the children.
The later work is where the reputation now rests. She has made three films with White, and the parts he and others have given her are mothers and supporting figures in small films, roles that mix comedy with pathos rather than choosing one. Critics who have followed her that far tend to notice the same thing we do: the recklessness has not gone, it has been pointed inwards. The vulnerability that made Mary Katherine Gallagher funny makes a grieving parent bearable to watch.
We have to be honest about what we have reviewed. In How the Grinch Stole Christmas she plays Betty Lou Who and is handed a contest over house lights and not much else; we felt sorry for her, sitting in all that Whoville clutter with one gag to hold, which is not what a Christmas film wants you to feel about anyone. In Promising Young Woman (2020) she is Mrs. Fisher, a part so brief our review did not single her out. Neither film is evidence against her. Both are evidence that a large production does not know what to do with a performer whose gift is commitment, because commitment needs room and these films had none to spare.
So the recommendation is a slightly awkward one. The films of hers we can point you to are not the films to judge her by. Go to Other People or Year of the Dog if you want to see what she can do when someone lets her be quiet, and treat her appearances in the big comedies as a familiar face passing through. She will not be on screen long enough to fall over.
Biography
Molly Shannon is an American actress and comedian. She was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 2001. She trained at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 1987.
Shannon is known for film roles including Betty Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), as well as appearances in A Night at the Roxbury (1998), Never Been Kissed (1999), Wet Hot American Summer (2001), Evan Almighty (2007) and Promising Young Woman (2020). On television she has appeared in Enlightened (2013), Divorce (2016–2019), The Other Two (2019–2022), The White Lotus (2021) and Only Murders in the Building (2024). In 2017 she won the Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female for Other People.
