Jim Hosking is the wacky deadpan surrealist of indie cinema who has now created another bizarre stoner comedy, a two-hander and a bit lower budget than his earlier works such as The Greasy Strangler and An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn. It is like an epic-length Mitchell and Webb sketch in fact, the kind of film you find yourself laughing along to, just a bit, in a spirit of throwing in the towel – a spirit of not quite being able to believe that two actors, mugging and gurning at each other, really are saying these same lines to one other, over and over again.
The setting is Mull of Kintyre in 1981, and a pop star called Paul, with a strangely familiar but also entirely ersatz Liverpool accent, is welcoming a visitor, who arrives implausibly by rowing boat through the choppy grey sea. This is a blind Black pop legend called Stevie, who appears nonetheless to be able to see (and derisively imitate) Paul’s quirkiest mannerism whenever he gives it: a perky thumbs-up. (They are played, respectively, by Hosking’s regulars Sky Elobar and Gil Gex.)
After a cup of tea, some whisky and a “doobie-woobie”, they have conversations that might be those of two space aliens from separate planets. They seem alternately wary, hostile, and yet finally willing to tolerate and even welcome each other’s existences. This is a relationship which survives going swimming together in the icy sea (are these penile prostheses, incidentally?), dressing up as sheep and saying “Baaaaa!”, and other peculiar adventures.
Is this encounter really going to foment the personal and creative atmosphere in which two great talents are going to create one of the most pro-racial-harmony pop singles in history? Maybe. Never at any time do they get down to the business of talking about this song, or trying out some melodies or lyrics – legal and copyright restraints would otherwise certainly become an issue. But it is funny when Stevie repeatedly and angrily shouts the words “Scottish cottage” in his American accent. Silliness of this purity is rare.