Earlier than “Ebony and Ivory” premiered at Implausible Fest, director Jim Hosking took the stage to supply a disclaimer in regards to the weirdness his viewers was about to see. “I feel like any time this movie screens anywhere, I have to be there to contextualize it,” he stated with fun. “Because it’s hard enough to understand without the contextualization.”
Even at a competition that prides itself on programming unclassifiable cinema for an abnormally open-minded viewers, Hosking’s feedback had been most likely merited. His newest movie is a feature-length sensible joke that facilities round a false origin story for a 42-year-old music whose relevance solely fades with every passing yr. In 1982, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder duetted on “Ebony and Ivory” a pop ditty that espoused platitudes about racial concord by calling on people to behave extra like piano keys. To some, the refrain — “Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony/Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord, why don’t we” — is a well-intentioned dose of ’80s cheese from two music legends. To others, it’s an unforgivable creative monstrosity. Hosking counts himself among the many latter camp, telling the viewers that “Even when I was six, I knew those lyrics were absolutely appalling.”
It seems that the filmmaker behind “The Greasy Strangler” and “An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn” was so offended by the stupidity of the musical collaboration that he took it upon himself to make one thing even stupider. And no matter one’s ideas on the music, he succeeded past his wildest desires. “Ebony and Ivory” provides a extremely fictionalized account of the primary assembly between Paul McCartney (Sky Elobar) and Stevie Wonder (Gil Gex) as they get to know one another with the hope of sparking a future collaboration. It’d bear no resemblance to what truly occurred, but it surely’s laborious to not be jealous of the characters, who clearly dwell in a extra entertaining model of actuality than we do.
In Hosking’s world, very like in actual life, the music “Ebony and Ivory” was born at Paul McCartney’s cottage in rural Scotland. However that’s the place the similarities finish. Whereas the true music was written by McCartney, who then enlisted Wonder to sing it with him, Hosking’s bizarro telling of the story begins with Wonder crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a row boat to go to McCartney for no explicit cause. The “Superstition” singer is in a foul temper from the second he arrives, however he claims that he sought out McCartney as a result of “music legends are supposed to help other music legends musically.”
The remainder of the movie quantities to 2 males hanging out even supposing they don’t significantly need to be hanging out. No one performs an instrument or writes lyrics, and we by no means truly hear the music that they ultimately wrote. As a substitute, the 2 males eat an ungodly quantity of frozen vegetarian meals — typically with silverware, different instances with Paul’s Nugget Slide, which makes use of gravity to ship veggie nuggets instantly into Stevie’s mouth. They drink whiskey, Fizzy Beer, milk, and different libations from a fictional Scottish model often known as Wee Billy’s Large Wee. They smoke “doobie woobie” from Paul’s furry doobie field. They have interaction in copious quantities of full frontal nudity whereas streaking across the Scottish shoreline, and so they bike to the market to seek out substances for an more and more elaborate scorching chocolate recipe.
Some may see “Ebony and Ivory” as a kind of satire towards a vapid cultural second, as Hosking appears to make the case that such a simplistic music may solely be born out of 48 hours of completely idiotic conduct. However it’s debatable whether or not the movie even has that a lot to say. It’d merely be an excuse for Hosking and two of his buddies (each actors appeared in each “The Greasy Strangler” and “An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn”) to goof off and cobble collectively 90 minutes of idiotic nonsense to foist upon unsuspecting competition audiences.
If that’s the case, extra energy to them. The skinny premise doesn’t stop “Ebony and Ivory” from being a wildly entertaining delight. Elobar and Gex completely straddle the road between caricature and making shit up of their performances, conserving a number of distinctive traits from their well-known characters whereas feeling liberated to interrupt from actuality at any time. Watching their idiotic phrase video games, lengthy arguments within the type of riddles, and bare seashore dances could be a side-splitting good time regardless of who they had been enjoying. With the fitting rollout, “Ebony and Ivory” is likely to be a breezy trip down the Nugget Slide away from cult basic standing.
Grade: B+
“Ebony and Ivory” premiered at Implausible Fest 2024. Alamo Drafthouse will launch it theatrically at a later date.
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