Ishtar (1987)

(In French, On Cable TV, March 2019) For at least a decade, Ishtar was a punchline among movie fans for anything having to do with a high-budget bomb. Even despite featuring no less than Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, and a shoot in a far-flung exotic location, Ishtar got swept in a storm of production problems involving a perfectionist first-time director, two stars with massive egos, a vicious studio reorganization, and incredible budgetary overruns. (Seriously; a summary of Ishtar’s production history reads like a train wreck in motion.) By the time the much-delayed and infamously troubled Ishtar made it to the public, critics were positively salivating for blood in taking down the film. Thirty years later, well, Ishtar’s not entirely bad. Nominally, it’s still about two mediocre songwriters getting swept in revolutionary intrigue in a Saharan country. Perhaps the worst thing we can say about it is that it’s underwhelming. It’s occasionally funny by force of dialogue or absurdity, but writer-director Elaine May’s direction is often badly handled and much of the film’s self-satisfied tone is clearly irritating. It gets off the wrong foot with annoying characters and then never recovers from it: While the idea of having Dustin Hoffman being the suave one and Warren Beatty the socially inept one is a funny bit of counter-typecasting, the novelty of it quickly wears off. What’s left is decidedly less interesting than what the critical savaging at the time suggested—especially if you’re expecting a terrible movie: the reality is far more middle-of-the-road. Ishtar remains just your average malfunctioning comedy, albeit one with a much bigger budget and star power than you’d expect.