Ishtar

Film in Focus

By Jonathon Saia

Ishtar (Columbia, 1987) – Director: Elaine May. Writer: Elaine May. Stars: Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin, Jack Weston, Tess Harper, Carol Kane, Aharon Ipale, Fijad Hageb, David Margulies, Rose Arrick, Julie Garfield, Christine Rose, Robert V. Girolami & Abe Kroll. Color, Rated PG-13, 107 minutes.

There are a small handful of films that enter the pantheon as abject failures. Some films are considered failures because of their box office returns, movies whose ballooning budgets could not compete with its audience's apathy. Some films are considered failures because critics have chimed in and told us they are bad, unfunny comedies or unintentionally humorous dramas that test the, at times, limited perceptions of the journalists who become our taste-makers. Ishtar is considered both, a film that has become short-hand for Hollywood excess and vain megalomania. The Golden Girls even have a joke about how awful it is.

The story goes that producer and star Warren Beatty backed Elaine May's newest project – a take on the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby road pictures – as a thank you for the Oscar nominated work she did on his film Heaven Can Wait (1978) and her script doctoring on his opus, Reds (1981). Elaine May, once known as one half of the brilliant improv duo Nichols and May (with legend Mike Nichols), had been practically blackballed from Hollywood after she was fired from her last film, Mikey and Nicky (1976), for going over budget and six months over schedule. But Beatty believed that May had never gotten a fair shake. So he recruited his friend Dustin Hoffman as the co-lead and the three of them headed to Morocco.

Problems persisted throughout the shoot, including feuds between May and her cameraman, Vittorio Storaro (who had worked with her and Beatty on Reds and later shot Beatty's Dick Tracy) over the look of the film; feuds between May and Columbia over the immense amount of footage she was shooting; feuds between May and Beatty over how she was shooting the footage; and feuds between May, Beatty, and Hoffman on the cut of the film, which eventually led all three to have their own editor working on a print. Bad press began to leak about the troubled production and unlike the scandal surrounding the making of Cleopatra (1963), another infamous Hollywood bomb, audience's stayed away from Ishtar in droves. The $40 million movie ended up making $12 million and May didn’t direct again for another 29 years. 

But what about the movie itself? Does it deserve the bad mouthing, the thumb biting, the complete disregard it receives? The answer is no.

Lyle (Beatty) and Chuck (Hoffman) are two terrible songwriters hoping to make it big in New York. With nowhere else to turn, their manager gets them a two-week booking in Ishtar, a mythical country near Morocco, at a restaurant for American tourists and GIs. While there, they get caught between a secret CIA operation to keep an American appointed Emir in power and a revolutionary coup to overthrow him. Shenanigans ensue as both sides look for a map that threatens to create a civil war. The boys are pitted against each other with the CIA trying to kill them for what they know and the leader of the rebellion (Isabelle Adjani – Beatty's then girlfriend) using their limited intelligence to her advantage. The movie ends with the boys and their agent blackmailing the CIA to back their album and a promotional tour in order to keep quiet. And one of them gets the girl. The movie doesn't say which, and it really doesn't matter.

As you can see, the plot is all over the place and not what one would call logical. But anyone looking for logic in the film misses the point. As homage, Ishtar captures the spirit of the Road to... movies, which relied on the personalities of Hope and Crosby (and Lamour) to carry the films. While some have complained that Beatty and Hoffman don't capture the essence of Hope and Crosby – Beatty is too attractive to be the schmuck (or as Lyle would say "s-muck") and Hoffman is too ugly to be the lethario Crosby – I would once again have to say this misses the point. Ishtar is not trying to remake Road to Morocco (1940); it is satirizing it. If Beatty were meant to be Hope, Lyle would be full of zingers and sarcastic asides; if Hoffman were meant to be Crosby, Chuck would be a lot more assured. Instead, Lyle and Chuck are two complete losers who seem like slightly more functional versions of Lloyd and Harry from Dumb and Dumber (1994) than anyone else. Casting Beatty and Hoffman against type only furthers the satire and both of them more than competently fulfill their roles, particularly in the New York scenes where we see them write and poorly perform their songs in what feels like real time (the songs were written by Paul Williams).

The scenes in New York are really where the film shines. May and her cast hilariously lampoon the shuck and jive of trying to make it in the city with no talent. Their act is so awful it could be handled by Broadway Danny Rose. If the film falls apart – and it definitely stumbles – it is when they go to Africa. It's not that May is incapable of shooting action sequences, but she definitely is more at home with the two-person repartee she famously honed with Nichols.

Some critics have complained that Beatty and Hoffman seem to be winking at the audience; that they come off as removed from the film in a negative way. First off, Hoffman is never winking at his audience. He is too Method for that. But I can see what they mean. The film is blatantly satirical and at times it seems when all else fails they are satirizing themselves, but this doesn't mean that they are "superior" to the material as some critics have surmised. Does anyone accuse Clooney and Pitt's constant on-camera tomfoolery as "superiority?" No. I think a lot of critics had it set in their minds that they were going to hate this film going into it, knew that the stars and their director were responsible for the negative press, and looked for ways to put the blame on Mame.

At the end of the day, despite the unfortunate legend that surrounds it, Ishtar entertains. In fact, it reminds me of a slightly worse version of Spies Like Us (1985), the really fun espionage comedy with Dan Akyroyd and Chevy Chase as bumbling government agents sent as decoys for an important Soviet take down. But Spies Like Us doesn't have Charles Grodin. Seriously, I need to see everything he has ever done.