ISHTAR 1987
38%
Written and directed by Elaine May
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Charles Grodin, Isabelle Adjani
Synopsis
Two klutzy New York lounge singers book a gig in Morocco. In the midst of penning some truly awful songs, the two become caught up in a CIA plot and wander the desert on a blind camel, now the targets of a manhunt.
Why We Love It
Often when a female director is given a record heap of money, harsh criticism will follow. In this case, Elaine May had already made a short string of well-received comic dramas: A New Leaf, The Heartbreak Kid, and Mikey and Nicky. She’d already worked with some starpower, but Ishtar was her first big-budget picture, and after some longer-than-expected location shooting in the North African deserts, entertainment journalists were already exasperatedly reporting May needed more cash. The ways in which journalists talked about that need was akin to tsk-tsking a pretty wife for spending all her money on shoes. It’s not like May could help it: real-life tensions in the Middle East halted much of the production.
But without all the hullabaloo about time and finances, Ishtar, evaluated on its own terms, turns out to be a pretty hilariously off-kilter comedy that features two of the biggest names of the time—Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty—in roles so unbecoming of them that you have to admire the guts it takes to ugly up the personality of a heartthrob for a laugh (think Brad Pitt and George Clooney’s roles in Burn After Reading). These men are willfully unattractive, and May makes them perform the kind of slapstick comedy you’d see in a Three Stooges or Marx Brothers routine. In fact, the story for Ishtar evolved from the classic road pictures starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, with the added oddball pleasure that neither character can actually sing.
Many critics mused that perhaps May was bored by the desert scenes she shot and so wasn’t inspired while writing them, but they also conceded that her writing and direction in the booze-soaked night club portions were up to her usual par. Hal Hinson, writing for the Washington Post, said, “the bad song lyrics… and the lines that Hoffman and Beatty half-mutter under their breath are the shiny nuggets glistening in the creek bed” of an otherwise muddied film.
Is this the best film May ever made? Probably not. But it didn’t deserve the smug hatred spewing from the critics who made a meal out of her first big-budget movie. If anything, it’s a must-watch because of May’s daring to break all the rules of Hollywood pictures, dumbing down the heroes to imbecilic numbskulls and watching the actors lower themselves a few notches.