Ishtar (1987)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Blistering performances.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I've heard a lot about Ishtar and I was eager to see if it was as bad as I had heard. There's good news and bad news for the film. The good news is that it isn't as bad as critics and the IMDb reviews would have you believe. However, let there be no mistake, it is not good. I grade films like it's school(10-A+, 9-A, 8-B, 7-C, 6-D, 5-F) so by giving it a 7 it may appear that I am giving it a rather good review for claiming it to be a waste of film. It's a D+ film that I rounded up to a C(7). The stars (especially Beatty with a dick van dyke level impression of a Texas accent that comes and (mostly) goes much like the humour in this film) are terrible and the singing and songwriting are so bad they're bad. It's skips past funny to be headache-inducingly annoying. Isabelle Adjani is pointless, the macguffin of the movie comes to nothing and the passionate freedom fighter seems to die in her when she meets and trusts the capitalist American government for inexplicable reasons. The only saving grace is Charles grodin, who delivers the only legitimate laughs in the film. Fortunately he's in a couple of scenes so there's about 10-15 minutes of actual humour. The biggest problem however is the editing of the film which is nonsensical and leaves the audience confused and wondering what the hell was going. The writing's not much better either but one feels that with improved directing, it could've been a lot better. So to reiterate, it's not the worst thing I've ever seen but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has the full use of their ears. I expect it's much better with the sound off

I've seen worse movies, but it is easy enough to see why Ishar is worthy of being called the worst Hollywood movie of all time.A story of two hapless New Yorkers trying to make it as a Simon and Garfunkel-type pop duo, but after they get booked to a gig in Morocco, they become involved in the Federal Bureau and a massive Civil War.The opening scenes are about emphasizing how terrible Hoffman and Beatty are as musicians. The lyrics are funny but when they perform, they are so deliberately void of talent that the gimmick is less funny than it is depressing. Even bad music needs to palatable and even entertaining (like Steve Martin's early SNL work), otherwise the audience will disown the characters. The biggest problem with Ishtar is that Hoffman and Beatty take themselves too seriously for a movie that is doing everything in the world to ridicule them. It makes you yearn for the delicious double takes of Bob Hope in the "Road to" movies that inspired this fiasco.Not even veteran DP Vilmos Szigmund (Close Encounters, Heaven's Gate) can bring anything to the movie. There are a few nice wide shots in the Sahara, but the overall picture is visually bland, with static camera work, under lit interiors, and no sense of depth or scope. As far as humour goes, most of it fall flat, but there are a couple of good laughs to be had. Hoffman pretends to be a weapons dealer at one point and his fake Arabic is a scream (if you don't mind the political offence). The story line is shapeless to the point of feeling improvised, and the ending feels rushed, although ironically that becomes a positive when considering how hard Ishtar is to sit through.

Ishtar has gone down in history as being synonymous with 'box office bomb' and somewhere along the way acquired the reputation of being a contender for the worst movie ever made. If we judge movies solely on their production this claim might hold water, but on purely artistic merits this is simply not true. There are far, far worse movies than Ishtar. That being said, a lot of people have gone a little too far in trying to rehabilitate it over the years. This is not the worst movie of all time, but it's still pretty bad. Judging comedies can be difficult just because humor is so subjective. While others may find Ishtar funny, I largely felt that the jokes simply didn't land. While there were occasional funny spots - usually involving the CIA - most of the humor in the movie just falls flat and it times borders on offensive. While I'm hardly Mr. Political Correct, the scene with the arms dealers where Dustin Hoffman spouts gibberish in an attempt to convince the arms dealers that he can speak Arabic is downright offensive. The worst part is the joke goes on for almost ten minutes. Now, since the movie's premise is following two mediocre song writers, it makes sense that the music would be bad. So-called 'stylistic awfulness' however is hard to pull off. The songs that Hoffman and Beatty sing are bad, but not really in a funny way. And since their singing act is featured prominently in the movie, it ends up being a pretty big liability.There's also the matter of the plot which is confusing and disjointed to say the least. It's hard to keep up with the various twists and turns when the duo get themselves involved in a CIA operation in North Africa and I couldn't help but feel like I was watching an abbreviated version of the movie where key scenes had been cut out. There's something involving a map that's never really developed properly, characters appear and disappear at random, and key developments seem to happen off-screen. The troubled production and post-production history is largely to blame for this I imagine. Beatty and director Elaine May were fighting for control throughout and the two of them, in addition to Hoffman, each had their own editors assemble different cuts of the movie.The three main leads also fare poorly for the most part. Beatty's character is from Texas, and he adopts this weird attempt at accent that he uses in some scenes and then drops in others. Hoffman is all right but embarrasses himself in the more comedic scenes due to the weakness of the material he's given and Isabelle Adjani is rather meek and forgettable. The fact that she's apparently going undercover as a boy and fools both Hoffman and Beatty is rather stupid given that she looks and sounds nothing like a boy.Overall, this is not the worst movie of all time. But it's pretty bad and not in a fun sort of way like Plan 9 from Outer Space or Birdemic, so you're really just better off not wasting your time on it. It's just another failed buddy comedy with a gimmick that would have faded into obscurity long ago if it wasn't for it's colossal budget.

True story: This is the only movie I have ever been to where it was discounted at the box office(This was like shortly after it had been released, I was like 10th or 11th grade). I walked up to pay and it was half the normal price, struck me as odd, but watched it anyway. Wish I had my 107 minutes back. The only redeeming feature was the previews and the Camel. This move lost like 40 million dollars for the production company. The Camel was the best actor in the whole film. The idea as a concept really wasn't that bad, but it jokes were weak at best and it was just dull. I really do believe this to be one of the worst movies ever made. The only movie I have seen worse then this is "Freddy Got Fingered" and even it wasn't discounted...I just couldn't finish it. At least with Ishtar, I only wish I had left, LOL.