Director: Jim Hosking
Writer: Jim Hosking
Stars: Sky Elobar, Gil Gex, Carl Solomon
Synopsis: Two musical legends gather at a Scottish Cottage on The Mull Of Kintyre for a tense summit to discuss a potential collaboration that will ultimately result in a Global Number One smash hit single.
On the shores of Mull of Kintyre in the early 1980s, two musical legends meet. For the purpose of this review, we will call them Paul McCartney (Sky Elobar) and Stevie Wonder (Gil Gex), predominantly because they are meant to be some version of Paul and Stevie, although Jim Hosking never names them. The film opens with the same panning shot employed in the film clip for Wing’s excruciating ‘Mull of Kintyre’ where the McCartney’s spent a lot of the video showing off how nice their rural “Scottish cottage” and private ownership of a tip of the Scottish coast was. All woolen jumpers, Linda’s terrible harmonies, and wellingtons.
Stevie is rowing to shore and Paul stands nodding. He doesn’t do much to help as Stevie gets out of the boat laden with three large suitcases but does get him into his yellow Land Rover with the number plate ‘NUGG3T’ after Stevie has struggled up the beach. Finally in Paul’s SCOTTISH COTTAGE the two sit down to chat over a cup of Lapsang Souchong (that’s a smoky brew, a fancy brew), and Stevie is distinctly out of sorts. How was the journey Paul asks? “It was a very, very, very, very, long journey,” is the reply. The tea tastes like pee pee according to Stevie, which upsets Paul who demands a retraction. One Stevie gives but only because he wants things to go smoothly.
Things do not go smoothly. To begin with, Paul is achingly dull. He natters on endlessly about the different varieties of vegetarian ready meals “By the Wife” (the standee of Linda as a veggie sausage is priceless) and tries to keep a lid on how many “Wee Willy’s Big Frisky Whiskeys” Stevie can have. But the “Man, the myth, the legend” needs to relax, so they have a puff or two on one of Paul’s doobie woobies before Paul sings the entire menu of ready meals acapella to Stevie.
“Oh, you can sing, can you?” Stevie sneers. “Yes, some say I’m quite good.” Paul replies. “I’ll be the judge of that!” Stevie retorts. When it comes to brass tacks, Paul doesn’t know why Stevie even came to his SCOTTISH COTTAGE. Apparently, it’s an act of charity – Stevie is there to help Paul out. “Listen, mate, I don’t think you know who you’re speaking to. It’s me. The cute one.” Stevie gives him a thumbs up and a head wiggle, before Paul goes off telling Stevie he doesn’t even like his music, it’s cheesy and that’s coming from him. He threatens him with his cheesy feet. Stevie tells him Paul is jealous because Stevie can play every instrument (a joke related to the 1982 film clip for ‘Ebony and Ivory’ in which Paul is playing every instrument) and the two head off to what they think are separate beds for the night.
The genius of Paul Hosking’s two hander is that it’s utterly pitiless. It’s hard to say what Stevie Wonder did to deserve such derision beyond the ridiculously simplistic duet with Paul McCartney (music can change the world!), but it’s fairly easy to see why people found McCartney and his roleplaying as a farmer cringeworthy. Of course, the two never met in Scotland, and if they did it would unlikely have been in the rundown SCOTTISH COTTAGE instead of the huge property it became after McCartney first bought it in the mid 1960s as a tax haven.
Nevertheless, if you know anything about Jim Hosking and his previous work The Greasy Strangler and An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn you know that repetitive jokes, heightened absurdity, merkins, prosthetic penises, and icky feet are just the tip of the weirdo iceberg.
If Stevie Wonder making Paul McCartney provide him with the perfect hot chocolate with five agreed upon ingredients (because he almost drowned in earlier) and then demanding foot strokeys (no toe sucking), psychedelic trips with a huge frog guiding them, breaded vegetarian meals and nugget slide, two sheep with Paul and Stevie’s faces bleating Ebony and Ivory until they expel some abject fluids, and hand holding and naked skipping is your deal… well… Paul Hosking delivers.
Sky Elobar and Gil Gex hold the film together with whatever brown sauce Brits love to smother their breakfast foods with. Their bravura and ridiculous performances are comparatively tame for a Hosking film, but they’re non-stop hilarious. Ebony and Ivory is absolute nonsense and absolute brilliance, and if you don’t start choke laughing at some stage, get the person next to you to check your pulse.