Review: "Ishtar" (1987)

A few months ago I blogged about movies about New Yorkers who travel to strange lands and get into trouble. Now you can add another such movie to your list, and this one's notorious, the 1987 bomb Ishtar.

When it was released more than 30 years ago, Ishtar become one of those movies that everyone loves to hate. You get them every few years: Heaven's Gate, Howard the Duck, Bonfire of the Vanities, Battlefield Earth, Gigli, and many others. They cost a fortune to make, stories of production problems and strife get into the press before release, the critics trash them, the movies tank at the box office, studio executives get fired, the directors and actors involved go into hiding, and the only ones who benefit are late night comedians (and, these days, social media folks).

It's a kind of sick thrill for those of us in the general public to see the people involved -- rich and famous and glamorous movie stars and power brokers who have more success, money and sex then we'll ever have -- suffer a massive public embarrassment. It's schadenfreude for the great unwashed.  

But what about the movie? Well, that's were it gets interesting. 

Ishtar is about two extremely untalented and clueless NYC musicians played by Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty who get a gig playing in Ishtar -- a country near the Moroccan border -- and who bumble their way into getting involved with the CIA, terrorists, archaeologists, and a hot chick. It's an extremely silly movie, totally ludicrous, and sometimes the storytelling is clunky and the tone of the movie inconsistent.

But here's the thing: Ishtar is FUNNY! Like, REALLY funny. Like, tears in the eyes funny. Ultimately, that's what a comedy is about: making people laugh, and this movie made my wife and I laugh a lot. So, in my view, Ishtar is a sucessful comedy, and I'm not the only one who, 30+ years later, has seen it and thinks this.

Ishtar bombed for several reasons: first, there was a behind the scenes smear campaign launched by the studio that produced it since a new regime has come in after production had started -- and the new regime wanted to embarrass the old regime by making it fail, and also to embarrass Beatty and Hoffman who had difficult reputations. Also, the director, Elaine May, had a difficult reputation, and the studio wanted to embarrass her. Second, the movie suffered from the fact that it was an extremely silly movie (it was based on the old 1940's Hope & Crosby "Road" movies) starring two "serious" actors whose previous movies had been Reds and Death of a Salesman -- seeing Beatty and Hoffman in this zany comedy was probably disorienting for critics and audiences (as it was for me). Third, and finally, the comedy in Ishtar is way ahead of it's time. It's cringe humor, its existentiallist humor, it's not the kind of Police Academy comedy that was popular at the time. Audiences weren't ready for it yet.

So you should give Ishtar a chance -- it's not the greatest comedy by a long shot but it's very funny and lighthearted. These days, we need that comedy more now than ever.