When Elaine May’s ambitious satirical epicIshtarhit theaters in 1987, contemporary critics dubbed it one of the worst movies ever made. The audience that saw these reviews steered clear of the movie and it became a notorious box office failure. But it’s nowhere near as bad as its reputation would suggest; it’s actually a really sharp geopolitical satire anchored by Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty’s hilarious chemistry as a songwriter-turned-spy duo.
According toThe New York Times,Ishtarhad a whopping budget of $51 million – which made itone of the most expensive movies ever madeat the time, just shy of the price-tags attached toSuperman,Rambo III, andTotal Recall– andBox Office Mojoreports a worldwide gross of just $14,375,181.Ishtarhas gone down in Hollywood history as one of the biggest commercial failures of all time. LikeWaterworldandCleopatra,Ishtarhas become synonymous with the term “box office bomb.” But just because a movie didn’t make money, it doesn’t mean it’s bad.
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Ever sinceIshtar’s fate was sealed, pretty much anyone who’s said a bad word about it is just jumping on the bandwagon. Most of the people trashingIshtarhaven’t actually seen it; they’re just going by its reputation alone. As a big-budget movie featuring two ofHollywood’s biggest starsat the time,Ishtarbecame an easy target for ridicule when it received negative reviews and failed to turn a profit for the studio. In a conversation with frequent collaborator Mike Nichols (available onYouTube), May joked, “If all of the people who hateIshtarhad seen it, I would be a rich woman today.”
Hoffman and Beatty star as Chuck Clarke and Lyle Rogers, a Simon & Garfunkel-style folk duo with a stronger friendship and a fraction of the talent. After being booked for a gig in a Moroccan hotel, the two unwittingly get swept up in espionage and international intrigue.Ishtarstarts off as a Woody Allen-styleneurotic New York comedyabout a pair of artists terrified of loneliness and failure, but it quickly evolves into an ambitious adventure movie with an epic scope. This geopolitical portion of the plot is similar to Graham Greene’s classic anti-spy novelOur Man in Havana. Like Greene’s mild-mannered protagonist James Wormold, Chuck and Lyle are a couple of unwitting patsies who get swept up in a spy mission and instantly find themselves in way over their heads. Before they know what they’ve gotten themselves into, they’re being chased through bazaars and shot at from helicopters.
Ishtarhas some formidable talent in its credits list. The editors include Stephen A. Rotter, who shared an Oscar for co-editingThe Right Stuff, and William H. Reynolds, who cut together asThe Sting,The Godfather, andThe Sound of Music. Dave Grusin, who composed the music forThe Graduate(also starring Hoffman) andThree Days of the Condor, worked on the score. The movie was shot by Vittorio Storaro, the heavyweight cinematographer behind1900,Last Tango in Paris, andApocalypse Now. Once the movie jets off to Morocco, Storaro starts filling each sequence with breathtaking landscape photography. His work behind the camera creates a hilarious juxtaposition with the bumbling buffoons who populate those landscapes. Storaro captures the desert as beautifully asLawrence of Arabia, but the characters traversing the desert have no idea how to ride a camel.
The joke that Chuck and Lyle are terrible musicians lands spectacularly, because Hoffman and Beatty play tone-deaf singing to excruciating perfection and the intentionally bad songs provided byPhantom of the Paradise’s Paul Williamshave the kind of hysterically banal lyrics that only a great lyricist trying to write badly could write: “Telling the truth can be dangerous business / Honest and popular don’t go hand in hand.” Chuck and Lyle are convinced they have a bunch of hit records on their hands, but they crumble every time they try to perform them live.
The two plotlines converge hysterically when Chuck and Lyle use their new political connections to leverage their way into a record deal they would’ve never gotten if they relied on the quality of their music. Thanks to their government dealings, when Chuck and Lyle break into their pseudo-poetic cosmic ballad – “I feel so small when I look at the stars. How big is Venus?How big is Mars?” – soldiers in attendance are ordered to applaud by their commanding officer. May wrings every possible laugh out of her uniquely absurd premise.
Ishtarbrilliantly satirizes the bureaucracy of international politics and the misunderstandings that can arise from the secrecy of intelligence agencies. But that’s just the gravy; it’s not the heart of the movie. At its core, machine guns and helicopters aside,Ishtaris a surprisingly relatable story about two truly untalented songwriters trying to break into show business with their drive and their refusal to give up and their unwavering belief in themselves alone. Not everybody can relate to undercover spies or daring revolutionaries, but everybody can relate to characters determined to follow their dreams, no matter what.
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