{"id":49552,"date":"2025-09-03T14:09:27","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T18:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=49552"},"modified":"2025-09-04T16:41:28","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T20:41:28","slug":"ebony-ivory-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/03\/ebony-ivory-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Ebony & Ivory [2025]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Two men descend into madness on an island. What the hell is The Lighthouse? Nah, I\u2019m talking about the *totally* true story of when Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder made\u2026 Ebony & Ivory, also the title of this wild and weird odyssey from Jim Hosking.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ebony & Ivory is written and directed byJim Hosking, the same filmmaker who delivered The Greasy Strangler nearly a decade ago. It\u2019s a film I love, a semi-slasher gross-out oddity that I describe as \u201cTim & Eric, John Waters, and Lloyd Kaufman smoked a vat of meth and decided to make a movie.\u201d If you\u2019ve seen it, how you took it will determine your thoughts on Ebony & Ivory.\u00a0 It\u2019s the same avant-garde sort of niche strangeness. The type of film that\u2019s an excuse for weird and strange people to come together and be just as weird and strange as they want and can. For better or worse (depending on where your line is), you must love the sheer will of chutzpah to make whatever messed-up ideas enter Hoskings and his team\u2019s twisted minds. Hosking (and I) know it won\u2019t be in everyone\u2019s bad taste, but for those who do, it\u2019ll land with gleeful mania.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason for this round of raunchiness is a fictional meeting of musical legends Paul McCartney and Steve Wonder. Wonder, rowing himself in a tiny boat, visits Paul at Mull of Kintyre for a weekend of talking, smoking marijuana, and just all around weirdness as they go just a wee bit mad in seclusion. This is your The Lighthouse on [adult swim].<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The humor that drives Ebony & Ivory is ludicrous. It\u2019s deliberately awkward, with jokes in strange places, delivered oddly, coming off as a sort of performance art. It\u2019s dry and matter-of-fact with strange turns of phrases, and it pushes it all to the limit. How long can you watch a single scene or hear a phrase repeated ad nauseam for several minutes? It\u2019s the shift from \u201cokay, that\u2019s funny\u201d to \u201chow long is this going to go?\u201d ultimately shifting back to hilarious in how far it’s taken. It\u2019s a punishing push of humor. For many, it\u2019ll be a chore; for others, it\u2019ll be a gleefully weird riff. There\u2019s a joy in not knowing where any particular moment will go, whether it be Paul trying to get Stevie to say \u201cDoobie Woobie\u201d, becoming rams just because, circular arguments, or Paul\u2019s long explanations of \u201cBy the Wife\u201d vegetarian protein products. The film is punctuated with wonderful visual gags (said product\u2019s labels) and a fair bit of physical comedy, but the focus is on the performance of the pair bickering like children.<\/span><\/p>\n

The pair of performers (this is a two-hander besides a brief third player) is perfectly suited for Hosking\u2019s world. They should be; both have worked with Hoskings before. Sky Elobar and Gil Gex, as Paul and Stevie, were Big Brayden and Big Paul in The Greasy Strangler. For the sake of the film and its style, neither is truly trying to emulate their famous counterparts. It\u2019s a lot of fun watching them hang their unique performances and methods on the pop culture understandings of the pair. Elobar\u2019s purposely wide accent, sounding like an imitation of an imitation, is a hoot and adds another level. Gex\u2019s Stevie is a boisterous ass, turning \u201cshit & fuck\u201d repetitions into a mantra of character. The pair have amazing chemistry, bouncing the barbs so well.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Although the Paul & Stevie dynamic is more of an excuse for the depravity, there is a slight level of parodying the self-righteous biopic. The sort of films about famous people, which make on-the-nose or cringe-inducing winks at the pop culture and history of the figures. Walk Hard and Weird: The Weird Al Story (bring Madonna to justice for her crimes!) explored the biopic so perfectly and deeply, but Ebony & Ivory touches on it in the funniest, most direct manner, fitting the type of picture. (Paul himself had one of these movies with another fictional meeting in 2001\u2019s Two of Us, a solid if twee flick of Paul and John reuniting the night George was on SNL). I\u2019ve even avoided filling this review with references. I\u2019ve been listening to Paul\u2019s catalog a lot of late, so I’ve been putting some puns on the run (heh, okay\u2026 live and let\u2026 live :-p ). I loved how Ebony & Ivory turned the eventual reveal of the titular song. It\u2019s done in the most insanely dumb, low-key way that had me cracking up. But the whole film did.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jim Hosking\u2019s Ebony & Ivory is an absurdist exercise in oddball performances by a pair of committed performers, an odder script, and all-around weirdness. It will not appeal to everyone. But for those who like to tap into its strange vein, it\u2019ll be a saline solution of silly citations. I am one of those. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two men descend into madness on an island. What the hell is The Lighthouse? Nah, I\u2019m talking about the *totally* true story of when Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder made\u2026 Ebony & Ivory, also the title of this wild and weird odyssey from Jim Hosking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[219],"class_list":["post-49552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49558,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49552\/revisions\/49558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}