Review – Ishtar

Wow, this thing really is as terrible as it’s cracked up to be. And the amazing thing is that the parts that are supposed to be dreadful – musical performances by Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman – are actually some of the movie’s better moments. Two talentless songwriters somehow manage to snag a performance booking in Morocco but end up in Ishtar, a fictional country full of some of the stupidest spies and dumbest despots on the face of the earth. Both the drastically-overpaid stars ($5 mil each back when such a sum was even more exorbitant than it is now) wander around in a hit-in-the-head-with-a-brick daze, barely managing to deliver their lines on most occasions. Usually such performances would be unfair to the screenwriter, but here I think justice was done. The awfulness of the production makes the viewing experience something of a novelty. But beyond that, if rumors about David Puttnam trying to kill this thing are true then it’s a pity he didn’t meet with greater success. See if desperate