Ishtar (1987)

What a waste of my time!!!

Too much of everything

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

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.

I went to the cinema to see this move back in 1987 when it first came out I was there with my cousin after watching this move for just over an hour non of us were laughing. all we wanted to do was leave and go home we stuck it out till the end we can never get that time back and it was a total wasted our money watching what I can only call the worst move in history. you could not add a spoiler for this move it was spoiled from the start so for a laugh we went home told all our friends it was hilarious and they should go see it why should we be the only ones who wasted our money and time . and none of them found it funny either so if you ever get the chance to see this move don't

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.