dear Ishtar,

I love you. I hope one day everyone else does too.

Sincerely,
willow

A predestined failure that has emerged, 25 years later, as an orphan worth adopting-- awkward at times, with leads that work hard to redeem their miscasting, but winning and sweet and full of inspired silliness. The film handles the far outskirts of show business with a knowing wit that the Moroccan mayhem cannot quite equal (though the blind camel is never not funny), but its overall affability wins the day for me.

Songwriters of Arabia
On a ledge of sanity.
Patsies for politics
Blind as a camel.
Honest and popular
Don't go hand in hand.

Anyone who calls this a bad movie is a smuck.

"Whatever you think it's worth."

When we describe something as "going over budget" there's an odd presumption of guilt on the part of the filmmaker and innocence on the part of the studio. Maybe the budget offered to Elaine May for Ishtar was insufficient for her vision. I want to see an accusatory headline, "Studio underfunds genius woman." Leave Elaine alone!

Best only tangentially related bit of IMDB trivia: "Director Donald Cammell had also tried to set up a production titled 'Ishtar' with Mick Jagger and Norman Mailer, but it appears to have been a mystical sci-fi tale." One ticket to the universe in which that got made, please.

Horrific film but one of my most memorable viewing experiences. I watched the uncut version of this film overnight without sleeping and had a near breakdown. The first 10-20 minutes of this are genuinely moderately entertaining but as soon as they set off for Ishtar it becomes unbearable. About 40 minutes from the end of this film I began shaking and laughing hysterically at how bad it was. I would not recommend watching this but if you are going to watch it while deprived of sleep.

Me in 1987: ISHTAR is excruciatingly unfunny and reeks of desperation.

Me in 2018 (older, wiser, etc.) ISHTAR is excruciatingly unfunny and reeks of desperation.

Breakdown of laughs:
Vultures: 2
Camel: 1
Charles Grodin: 1 (consistently amusing)
Dustin Hoffman: 0 (terrible yet committed)
Warren Beatty: 0 (a deer-in-the-headlights disgrace)

Gay jokes and Arab jokes woefully outdated. Treatment of Isabelle Adjani idiotic and offensive.

The cinematic equivalent of flopsweat.

An underdog buddy romp full of political intrigue, deadpan humor, and belief in the transformative power of absurdly awful songwriting.

"She said, 'Come look,
there's a wardrobe of love in my eyes;
Take your time, look around and see
if there's something in your size.'"

A reminder that the American government has been doing nutty things in the Middle East for quite some time.

Charismatic, very funny, surprisingly genre oriented, and an AMAZING soundtrack. 

Why the FUCK do people not like this?

I nearly reached Nirvana watching Warren Beatty's performance in this
unloved comedic gem. What a treasure, what a shame, and now I will be singing Ishtar's praises to anyone willing to listen.

“He’d rather just sit there than move when you ask him. He’d rather get shot!”
“Actually, I kind of admire that.”
“Me too.”

Simultaneously better than its reputation and also understandable as a failure, as it has a really choppy and meandering structure, and even when jokes work it often feels like the pieces are there for the payoffs to land even bigger with better execution. Charles Grodin is the MVP.

Also a real tough sit after the various -- and in the last case, especially vile -- allegations against Dustin Hoffman. Not sure I would have identified him as such a comforting presence to me previously as I can now, feeling the intense opposite of that comfort every second he's on screen.