Ishtar

Name: Ishtar
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Musical
Released: May 15, 1987
Duration: 107 min
Rating: 51
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Adjani, Warren Beatty

1987

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Mixed or average reviews based on 16 Critic Reviews

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Mixed or average reviews based on 17 Ratings

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Ishtar

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Movie Details & Credits

Columbia Pictures | Release Date: May 15, 1987 | PG-13

Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Adjani, Warren Beatty

Summary: Chuck Clarke (Hoffman) and Lyle Rogers (Beatty) are a couple of no-talent New York singer-songwriters who agree to play the only gig they can find at the Chez Casablanca in Morocco. En route, they become embroiled in various international intrigues in the neighboring (fictional) Ishtar.

Director: Elaine May

Genre(s): Adventure, Comedy, Musical

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 107 min

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Critic Reviews

Sheila Benson

A smart, generous, genuinely funny affair. Sometimes, like the camel who almost ambles away with the picture, it's longish in the tooth, but it is based on an extremely astute vision of life. [15 May 1987]

Dave Kehr

Ishtar is a good movie, but you can't help but wonder if, lurking somewhere in those cans of outtakes, there isn't a great movie, too. [15 May 1987]

Richard Schickel

Reasonably genial and diverting. [18 May 1987]

Judy Stone

It's worth seeing the movie just to observe [Grodin's] delicious blend of unctuous manipulation and anti-Communist sanctimoniousness. [15 May 1987]

Julie Salamon

Hoffman and Beatty are so tone-deaf they don't even know how to play the songs for deadpan humor. They seem old, white, and without shtick. [14 May 1987, p.26(E)]

Pauline Kael

When Beatty and Hoffman doe their (deliberately hopeless) singing numbers, jerking like mechanical men, phrasing unmusically, going off-key, they don't have the slapstick skills for it. That's when you long for Martin and Murray, or some other comics. [1 June 1987, p.102]

Roger Ebert

A truly dreadful film, a lifeless, massive, lumbering exercise in failed comedy. Elaine May, the director, has mounted a multimillion-dollar expedition in search of a plot so thin that it hardly could support a five-minute TV sketch. Read full review

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Piso

Mar 7, 2019

Unfairly Maligned Comic Masterpiece Deserves Second Look

Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman are brilliant and charismatic in this buddy farce about the fantastic misadventures of two passionate, sincere, severely deluded songwriters attempting to become the next Simon and Garfunkel.Unfairly Maligned Comic Masterpiece Deserves Second Look

Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman are brilliant and charismatic in this buddy farce about the fantastic misadventures of two passionate, sincere, severely deluded songwriters attempting to become the next Simon and Garfunkel. Recognizing the duo's utter lack of talent, their agent books them a gig in the only place he can: Morocco. Through a series of absurd mishaps, they become embroiled in revolutionary espionage. Never better, Charles Grodin co-stars as a CIA agent with dry perfection. The CIA is playing high stakes chess with communist revolutionaries as Beatty and Hoffman wander lost through the desert on a blind camel. Every scene crackles with quotable dialogue. In one scene, Hoffman is on the ledge of his apartment building threatening suicide:
Beatty [to Hoffman]: It takes a lot of nerve to have nothing at your age, don't you understand that? Most guys'd be ashamed, but you've got the guts to just say "to hell with it"! You say that you'd rather have nothing than settle for less...

Ishtar failed at the box office because of bad press over its high budget. Stories about production trouble and a a budget out of control doomed the movie to bomb before it ever came out, despite three successful previews to audiences who loved it. Every bad review was based on the budget and the resulting negative hype. Don't believe it. The fact is that this classic comedy is in league with all of your favorites, and you're only depriving yourself of a lot of good belly laughs if you don't give Ishtar a look. Ishtar aces the test of time.

Beatty [writing a song]: She said come look there's a wardrobe of love in my eyeeees... Take your time, look around.... and see if there's something your siiiize... Hoffman: **** man. When you're on, you're on!… Expand

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DrBlahBlah

Mar 6, 2019

One of the best comedies of all time, and easily the most underrated, this film is usually dismissed due to its box office failings, not its inherent quality, which is substantial.

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Sam

Oct 29, 2005

Ishtar isn't funny, it isn't clever, and it isn't entertaining, the complete opposite of Young Frankenstein, a true comedy classic. It is however, so damn close to being so bad it's good though.

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cameronmorewood

Nov 5, 2012

Ishtar is literally the worst movie I've ever seen in my entire life. Anyone who sits through it, is either socially/financially obligated to, or they just hate themselves that much.

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