Ishtar starring Warren Beatty, Dustin
Hoffman, Isabelle Adjani, Charles
Grodin, Jack Weston
Who Told You That? The Secretary Of State?
At the time of its release in 1987, this Elaine May production was bandied
about as one of the worst films of the decade. It was nominated for three
Razzie Awards that year--Worst Picture, Screenplay, Direction--but it still
was not the nadir detractors claimed it to be. (Remember, that was the
year Norman Mailers self-indulgence spilled all over the screen in Tough
Guys Dont Dance.) If this comedy had been made by unknowns, it would
have simply faded into the obscurity it deserves. The fuss came about
because May squandered much talent and a ridiculously large budget,
rumored to exceed $40 million, returning less than half of that in ticket
sales. Two artistically challenged lounge musicians (Warren Beatty and
Dustin Hoffman) are jettisoned out of the States by their agent, who finds
them a gig in Morocco. En route, they become pawns in an international
power play between the CIA, the mythical emir of Ishtar, and upstarts
hoping to overthrow the emirs regime. There are some humorous bits,
such as when Hoffman and Beatty so badly perform their horrible ditties
that audiences are left appalled. Most of the time however, we are the
ones lulled into a near daze by a hokey script and boorish jokes about
blind camels. If Abbott and Costello had made this flick, it might have
worked. --Rochelle OGorman
I have seen this movie so many times that my VHS tape is falling apart. I
desperately need a DVD of this wonderful film. When I saw this movie as a
teenager, I knew it was a moment of greatness. The subsequent barrage
of bad reviews taught me something valuable about the world: dont judge
a movie by its reviews. This movie was right on time, yet it was also ahead
of its time. Criticism that the first part of the movie is better than the second
is well-taken; however, both parts are better than a lot of movi es that have
been box-office smashes. The trouble with Ishtar is that it respects its
audience and invites critical thinking, but does so via the absurd. In the
present era of literal, us-vs-them thinking, as in the Reagan era when the
movie was made, there is a shocking lack of appreciation for the absurd.
Ishtars time has come again.
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