MasterChugs Theater: ‘Ishtar’

Welcome to quite possibly the most infamous movie mort that there is. Famous for being a colossal bomb, despite having a star studded cast of Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Charles Grodin, and Carol Kane, Ishtar is a failure, through and through. It’s not pretty folks. It’s just not pretty at all. Believe the hype, ladies and gentlemen.

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 Ishtar, a fictional location, mind you. OK, let’s take a look at this movie’s problems. First of all, the characters in the film are two big losers. And I mean, BIIIIIIG losers! They can’t sing or write songs for their lives, and spend the first twenty minutes of the movie proving this fact to us. Yes, I realize that this part was supposed to be funny, but I didn’t crack one smile the whole time. We call this irony. I just felt embarrassed for the two actors.

Then, the film switches gears and suddenly moves to Morocco, where the two morons get swept up into a political espionage scandal, that actually gets serious at some point. Huh? Back the train up please. Of course, the whole “bad singers” thing takes a back seat while the movie focuses on some inane plot-line about a historical map and how the communists want it as well as others, who may want the twosome dead, to join their collective commune, be all they can be, and yada yada yada.

And that’s when the laughs, such as they were, go as well. There’s only one funny line after they arrive at their destination, and that’s from the compere at the hotel introducing, “And now, from the team of Rogers and Clarke – Rogers!” Why is Lyle on his own? Because the heavy handed spy plot has intervened, and Chuck has become embroiled with freedom fighters from the neighbouring country of Ishtar represented by Isabelle Adjani, whose running gag is that she cries a lot of the time (maybe thinking of her hopes of an American career disappearing over the horizon?). Then Chuck is in the pay of the CIA thanks to agent Charles Grodin while Lyle joins up with the rebels; for a team they spend too much time apart. Apparently this was meant to be a throwback to the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road movies, but nothing really gels here, although it is interesting that the CIA are the bad guys when it emerges they want to kill our two heroes for the map they are unwittingly carrying.

Audiences may have been searching for more sophisticated humor, and they didn’t find it in Ishtar. Maybe they expected more from the illustrious Beatty and Hoffman, and Ishtar didn’t fit the bill. Or maybe there are only a few people in the world who find humor in blind camels stumbling through sand storms and eager buzzards prancing about before their would-be dinner. Or perhaps it’s just the music that scared people away. Many of the songs were penned by May, along with musician and actor Paul Williams, who was responsible for the lyrics of the Carpenter’s big hit “We’ve Only Just Begun,” as well as the soundtracks to The Muppet Movie and A Star Is Born. Somehow Rogers and Clarke’s “I’m Quitting High School” and “Wardrobe of Love” don’t match up to his other hits. But if you love the songs, the film’s end credits advertise the Ishtar soundtrack–though I’ve never seen this gem anywhere. Maybe ISHTAR’s problem was a combination of all the above. Or maybe Ishtar is just destined to be one of those ill-fated movies that shows up at the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong audience. But if you choose to rent it, as a viewer, you will most certainly fall into one of two very distinct categories: you’ll love it or you’ll hate it. In recent years, it has become fashionable to give Ishtar another chance and reappraise it as unfairly maligned, but, honestly, it really wasn’t that good in the first place. In fact … it burns. It burns a lot. Far from recommended.