Ishtar

Ishtar
May 15, 1987
Columbia
Comedy, Action
VHS
C-

This isn't as terrible as you've heard, but that's not saying much.  It starts out fine, with Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty as two talentless musicians who dream of the big time.  (Hoffman thinks they can surpass Simon & Garfunkel, a nice little sort of reference to Hoffman's break-through movie, directed by Elaine May's former comedy partner, Mike Nichols.)  The songs, mostly cowritten by Ms. May and Paul Williams, are so bad they're good.  But then writer-director May, in the form of the guys' agent, played by Jack Weston (27 years after Please Don't Eat the Daisies) sends them to the title country, on the border of Morocco.  And I lose almost all interest in the movie.

In a way, May was trying to make an '80s answer to the Road to movies, but she set this in sort of the real world.  (Hoffman thinks Kaddafy is another country.)  And there's none of the fourth-wall-breaking we got with Bob and Bing.  Also, their Dorothy Lamour is a left-wing revolutionary who flashes her breasts when she's pretending to be a boy.  May could've done some astute political satire (this was released in the midst of Iran-Contra after all), but what we get is no sharper, or funnier, than in Warren's sister's John Goldfarb.  Also, if I can't decide whether I wish there was more of Carol Kane or I'm grateful for her sake that her character breaks up with Hoffman's and disappears from the movie, that's not a good thing.  Even the whole reversed expectations of Beatty being a loser with women doesn't really have any kind of pay-off.

My advice: watch the first twenty minutes or so and then maybe the last three.  (If you need to see Isabelle Adjani's breasts, they're fairly early on.)

Fred Melamed had small roles in both Hannah and Her Sisters and Radio Days, and here he plays Caid of Assari.  Bill Moor plays U.S. Consul here and would be Duke Vermont in Tune in Tomorrow....