Cast:
Dustin Hoffman (Chuck Clarke), Warren Beatty (Lyle Rogers), Isabelle Adjani (Shirra Assel), Charles Grodin (Jim Harrison), Jack Weston (Marty Freed), Carol Kane (Carol), Tess Harper (Willa Rogers), Aharon Ipalé (Emir Yousef), Fred Melamed (the Caid of Assari), Fuad Hageb (Abdul), David Margulies (Mr. Clarke) and Rose Arrick (Mrs. Clarke) Written and Directed by Elaine May.
Review:
"Well, oddly enough when I made this movie, Ronald Reagan was president and there was Iran-Contra, we were supporting Iran and Iraq. We put in Saddam. We had taken out the Shah. Khomeini was there. I remember looking at Ronald Reagan and thinking—I’m qualifying this, this was just an idea, I didn’t really believe it—I thought, he’s from Hollywood, he’s a really nice man. It’s possible the only movie he’s ever seen about the Middle East are the road movies with Hope and Crosby, and I thought I would make that movie....If all of the people who hate Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman today."
To put it mildly, Ishtar landed like a smelly fish being thrown onto a wedding party with audiences at large. There's plenty to say about Elaine May beyond just saying this is (currently) her last film as a feature director. The Philadelphia native was the child of actors that had their own Yiddish theater company. Not surprisingly, she got into acting, which eventually led her to meeting Mike Nichols. The two collaborated with each other in improvisational comedy that led to them doing their own standup team that ran for a few years (resulting in Grammy Awards) before they went their own ways. After a handful of years in acting and theatre work, May became a director with A New Leaf in 1971. The Heartbreak Kid (1972) is arguably her most noted film, but Micky and Nicky (1976) endured enough trouble that she did not have her cut of the film shown to the public until after the film already died in theaters. So, a decade later, May was essentially given a chance to direct again because of her help in writing on Heaven Can Wait (1978) and Reds (1981), which each had Warren Beatty as star and director. So yes, Beatty would produce the film (believing that May never had a good producer behind her) to go along with starring alongside Hoffman, who happened to have the help of May in (uncredited) work on Tootsie (1982) and eventually went along with being in the film despite his misgivings about the script (specifically when the film shifts from New York to Morocco for "these guys who think they're Simon and Garfunkel"). While the movie was a flop, May has continued to write (such as the 1996 Nichols comedy The Birdcage) and occasionally act into her nineties.
Maybe it works better for those more familiar with road movies. The film is basically a riff on the seven Road to... films that featured Bing Crosby, Bob Hope & Dorothy Lamour from 1940 to 1962. Those were comedies that were more about gags (and the occasional song) than plot (which could have differing professions from film to film such as sailor playboys on an island or inept vaudevillians dealing with evil hypnotists). Of course, maybe I'm not as familiar with Hoffman or Beatty in films. Maybe it just was a bit too subtle for its time. Maybe, maybe, maybe, nah, this movie just wasn't for me. Honestly, I tried to give the movie a fair shake, but really it just wasn't that funny. It lumbers in the time between the start and actually getting to Ishtar with songs that totally supposed to be funny by being terrible (as written by Paul Williams, who you would remember from stuff such as A Star Is Born [1976]). But all I see is a movie that drones and drones until the only thing that matters by the end of its time in the sand and bland is being thankful you aren't stuck watching it further. You can try to mine humor all one wants in uncomfortable neurotic weirdos, you just have to *be funny* about it. Strangely, it reminded me of Spies Like Us (released two years earlier as its own homage to the Road films, complete with having Hope in a cameo), which also wasn't exactly great in, well, the comedy (of course, it didn't stop others from making their own Road homages, as evidenced by The Road to El Dorado [2000]). Hoffman and Beatty have mostly stuck with the film in terms of defending it (for the most part) with the former calling it "a B-minus, C-plus comedy". And there are people that have raised the film up as not being just a noted flop that probably did find something worthwhile in its comedy involving second-rate musicians that fulfill themselves in their craft. The attempts at showing the "creative process" must be how people who don't care for watching movies about making movies feel.
The chemistry of the trio just isn't there to inspire anything on the level beyond looking at the sand and the ideas of trying to say something about the politics around the people thinking about the Middle East that just seems middling. Adjani bumbles around in a silly getup (get it? short hair?) that benefits no one in actual presence, and the only funny one really is Grodin, because he always seems on point for understated amusement (or Weston, who is seldom seen). Even at 107 minutes, it just feels hollow and middle-ground, never actually getting a rise by the time it goes to what surely seemed funny for its climax of essentially saying, yes, you too can sing all you want and be a name if you happen to have leverage. As a whole, the negative buzz around the film didn't lend it many favors back then, and maybe there really will be a push a few more years down the line to really rehabilitate the movie as a hidden gem, but I am not one of those people. Encounter at your own curiosity of a film that is not nearly what you might think it is, for better or worse.
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
Next up: let's do a second chance for something that actually is good...Hudson Hawk.
