Ishtar (1987)......still maintains its standing and reputation as the most underrated, unappreciated and most unfairly maligned big budget comedy in Hollywood history.
Like many of the films that Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman chose to star in, "Ishtar" suffered through a chaotic production history, riddled with constant creative clashes.....especially between Beatty and director Elaine May, famous early in her career for her improv comedy routines with director Mike Nichols as her partner.
With its two major superstars, the movie was always destined to become an expensive proposition, an attempt to make a modern, updated version of a typical Bob Hope-Bing Crosby "road" movie....in other word, two American idiots abroad, stumbling into misadventures while stranded in exotic, foreign lands.....
"Ishtar" involved the two stars playing hapless, clueless no-talent amateur songwriters. Desperate, unemployed and forsaken by the women in their life (Tess Harper, Carol Kane), the boys accept a nightclub gig in Morocco.....(arranged for them by their elderly, barely interested agent (Jack Weston).)
Once in North Africa, the two dopes find themselves used as pawns in the lethal power struggle between the brutal authoritarian Emir and the opposing leftist rebels, whose most visible operative is the mysterious, beautiful Shira Assel (Isabelle Adjani).
Making matters even more complicated, a smoothly duplicitous CIA agent (Charles Grodin) also make use of the un-dynamic duo as easily dispensible chess pieces to fulfill the USA's own hidden agenda.
All these plot complications serve to leave Beatty and Hoffman stranded in the desert....(with a blind camel, but that's another story) Meanwhile every possible faction involved in the entire Middle East (including our own CIA) is out to kill them for one reason or another.
Never ones to give up, the boys stagger half dead through the desert, still coming up with fractured lyrics for their embarrassingly terrible songs....
Breaking news......if any of this sounds like it might make you laugh......it does. .
Decades before the avalanche of social media, "Ishtar" still managed to accumulate a literal ton of toxic advance press, with the film judged as a bloated colossal failure..........and this all happened before any ticket buyers ever laid eyes on a single frame of film.
And that's a damn shame......
Because the honest truth about 'Ishtar' got lost in the process......that the FILM IS DAMN FUNNY ALL THE WAY THROUGH!!!
Yes, you heard me correctly.
The film's hilarious from start to finish,,,,,,with the legendary stars displaying superb timing as a comedy team. (I only wish the film had made more of one of its funniest ideas - making Beatty's character a terrible shy failure with women.) And you just may fall in love with the deliberately dumb songs of their cabaret act, (actually written for the film with dry deadpan awfulness by singer songwriter Paul Williams)
BQ's strong advice here.......whether or not you're familiar with the mountains of critical publicity this film received, IGNORE THAT CRAP TOTALLY.
Simply sit back an enjoy "Ishtar" for what it is.......an very enjoyable silly good time. 4 stars (*****).
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