As if writer/director Jim Hoskins had not crafted a strange enough film with 2016’s immaculately terrible The Greasy Strangler, along comes Ebony and Ivory to even the playing field. For viewers who found that film to be a particular brand of insanity, just wait for what lies in Ebony and Ivory. Loosely plotted and overflowing with repetitive dialogue and bizarre asides, this dramedy oddity should satiate fans of offbeat skit-driven comedies like Tim and Eric: Awesome Show, Great Job! It seems to be at least partially, if not fully, taking inspiration from real-life legends Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. Being so niche automatically makes it impenetrable for a more casual watcher, who would probably be so overwhelmed by the ridiculous excess they could be likely to start chanting “shit and fuck.”
Paul (played by Sky Elobar from The Greasy Strangler) invites an irritable Stevie (Gill Gex) to his Scottish cottage for a musical collaboration. Paul, sporting an outrageous mullet and a knitted sweater, welcomes Stevie, a stylish black man, with open arms. Their eccentric and awkward interactions only push Stevie further into frustration, culminating in surreal and absurd moments. However, to even encapsulate this as the premise fails to fill in the cracks of its specificity. The jokes are so peculiar that one has to wonder what state of mind the creator was in whilst writing them. That’s not to say the idiocy is without merit—laugh-out-loud comedy lies in the eye of the beholder, and there are enough moments that embrace stupidity without a single qualm.
From the moment Stevie opines his “very very very very long journey,” Jim Hoskins launches us into the orbit of two off-the-wall characters that feel pulled from the annals of music history. Their at-odds bickering drives the narrative through so many drastic ups and downs that it often becomes difficult to keep up, let alone digest the efforts of Hoskins’s skewed point of view. This very notion is perfectly encapsulated by a full song about “vegetarian ready meal options.” To the benefit of a stoned and starved audience, Hoskins seems to allow free rein for improvisation, letting a joke evolve or repeat to the point of preposterousness.
As with Greasy Strangler before it, some of these phrases will become permanently chiseled into the mind by the time we approach the conclusion. “Ebony and Ivory,” both the title and the sheep-called expression yelled back and forth between two men dressed as the animals, may be the new “bullshit artist.” Whether either man can be considered music legends, Ebony and Ivory, complete with a riveting music score, provides memorably insane moments of comedy in a landscape often all too predictable in its trappings. Cheesier than a twelve-cheese pizza perhaps, yet still tasty enough to recommend.
Ebony and Ivory screened at 2024’s Fantastic Fest.
