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You won't be disappointed!

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It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I urge you to see it with an open mind. There's something for everyone here, though the two male leads were overcast. Two terrible lounge singers get booked to play a gig in a Moroccan hotel but somehow become pawns in an international power play between the CIA, the Emir of Ishtar, and the rebels trying to overthrow his regime. I thought this film was fantastic in some ways and terrible in others. Great performances help to enhance this story of friendship. No matter what anyone says, this is utterly fantastic, an eye-popping cinematic treat. I will never understand the hate for this movie. I found it to be sensational!

Naive American civilians and a hypocritical, amoral CIA blunder into the Middle East tinder box with its web of Shiite and tribal wars and a roiling opposition to the entrenched Arab despots -- some supported by the US. No, that's not the latest Oliver Stone. Or CNN. It's Elaine May's 1987 comedy Ishtar, which the critics numbered among the worst films ever made. That's how far ahead of its time Ishtar was. Though she continued to write, even collaborating with Ethan Coen and Woody Allen on a recent Broadway omnibus, May hasn't directed another movie since. Now that the DVD release won positive reviews in the New York Times and here on IMDb, I'm glad to see the film is finally getting its due. In this film May combined the form of the Crosby-Hope Road movies with the spirit of Rob Reiner's 1984 mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap. Dustin Hoffman (Chuck) and Warren Beatty (Lyle) respectively play the Hope and Crosby song and dance men, but with two twists. First, May plays Beatty against his reputation as legendary stickman and denies him Crosby's romantic edge over the delusional Hope character. Here Beatty is shy among women and incompetent. His Lyle doesn't recognize a woman when he wrestles with her. Even when he holds her breasts. Astonishingly, the critics failed to pick up Elaine May's tongue in chic.Secondly, the men are terrible composers and singers. (But Beatty and Hoffman are brilliant in performing mediocrity.) This is where it draws from Spinal Tap. Like that group Chuck and Lyle have a musical ambition entirely incommensurate with their talent and sensitivity. The bathetic lyrics by May and Paul Williams emblematize the shallow sentimentality and naivety of American culture. A doo-wop trio sing "I'm quitting high school cause you don't like me." Here Lyle neatly encapsulates the genre's cloying sweetness: "Hot fudge love, cherry-ripple kisses. Lip-smacking, back-slappin', perfectly delicious." Yet as Chuck lauds another Lyle banality, "Shit man, when you're on you're on."This musical silliness shades into the film's political theme when Shirra Assel (Isabelle Adjani, playing the Dorothy Lamour role of exotic temptress) warns the smitten Americans that "This is an ancient devious world, and you come from a young country. Promise me you will keep my secret without trying to understand it." By film's end the freedom fighter/terrorist has improbably grown misty-eyed over the clods. She flouts her cell to save their lives. In 1987, of course, the audience could still absolve a freedom fighter of terrorism.Our American heroes are completely unable to handle the area's politics, as the government, freedom fighters and CIA all resolve to kill them. That world is so dangerous that even a simple code -- say, "I want to buy a blind camel" -- can freeze into a burdensome reality. Their completely unfounded musical ambition and confidence are a desperate attempt to suppress their real sense of their own failure. They have their moments. The scene where Chuck is forced to to fake Berber lingo to auction off black market weaponry is a classic of Hopey bafflegab. He stumbles into effectiveness when he pulls a cry out of the very quality he needs to succeed here. Chuck stretches Chutzpah (yiddish for huge nerve) into Chutzpah-yi-yi! When an extemporized shriek carries such wit and weight you know the script is a work of masterful intelligence.And why wouldn't it be? It's Elaine May, the genius of those sharp-eared satiric skits she did with Mike Nichols. She wrote and directed those shrewd satires, A New Leaf and The Heartbreak Kid, and the brilliant Mikey and Nicky, where she outdid John Cassavetes on his own territory. Elaine May couldn't make a dumb movie. She had already worked with Warren Beatty on the script of his Heaven Can Wait (1978) and would co-write Mike Nichols' Clinton parable, Primary Colors (1998). But in its political satire Ishtar is closer -- indeed a companion piece -- to Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War (2007). The notorious Ishtar, far from being ineffectual, prepared for those later political satires and also, with its awful music and lyrics, the new genre of Cringe Comedy, like the Christopher Guest mockumentaries, the work of Ricky Gervais, and TV series like the transplanted The Office, Girls and Veep.

IMDb really needs to have a zero rating and this all-time stink-o-ramma-dome of a film is a perfect case in point ... why Beatty and Hoffman ever signed on is beyond most anyone's imagination and how their careers survived might be understandable but lord almighty they should have been made to clean every star on Hollywood blvd with a toothbrush as penance for this piece of celluloid smegma ...I'm not even going into the plot which is basically some latter-day tainted-mescaline freak-out of a Hope-Crosby road movie and there is little enough plot not to even bother ... one pointless scene moves into another barely held together by the cheapest of generic scotch-tape-premise ...at least Elaine May was punished for this hot-steaming-load of a film and never allowed to direct again ... she managed to produce some passable screenplays after Ishtar, 'Primary Colors' based on the bestselling novel (and nothing new in the political arena except they could point a finger at a current candidate) and 'Birdcage', but frankly they are just passable, not even approaching great in any way, and are a cookie-cutter selection from the Hollywood EZ-Bake script-idea oven (substitute a gay couple for an awful new in-laws meeting in 'Birdcage' and let Robin Williams do his VERY tiresome prancing gay 'send-up' which, also frankly, after 40 years of his doing this in every 'improv' or 'stand-up' routine we see of his, it has become more like trying to say 'it's OK to do black-face, minstrel send-ups as long as it's in the name of comedy' than it is any kind of comedic routine ... seriously, he needs to stop this ... it's offensive and as tiresome as the old comics from the "Bortsch-Belt" era sitting around in the 60s and 70s and doing their offensive ethnic or even racist routines and saying it's still more clever that those guys working 'blue' such as Lenny Bruce, etc ... sorry, going off on a tangent but Williams ALWAYS falls back on the 'flaming gay' routine, watch any of his appearances on 'whose line it is anyway', and he CANNOT do an improv scene WITHOUT using this hackneyed crap ... it is sad, offensive, and please, retire if this is all that can be passed off as inspiration) OK went off on a tangent there but golly gosh darn it, someone had to say it ...OK back to Elaine May .. even her best movie i think we'd all consider to be 'Tootsie' and yeah it was OK tho an uncredited writing credit so it's hard to tell what she did on it ... Bill Murray was the best part of the movie anyway ... had a big crush on Teri Garr at the time but by this time she was only playing the 'woman who is the patient every therapist/psychologist is waiting for and all they see while treating the patient is a big neon sign on the patient's forehead flashing 'BOAT' or 'LAKESIDE SUMMER HOME' and her routine was getting real old ... sorry Teri, but it's the truth ...'Heaven Can Wait' was OK ... cute and a good 'date movie' i suppose but anyone who believes that some out of shape middle-aged rich guy who never played a sport in his life can turn his physical body into an NFL top-caliber quarterback body just because the 'spirit' of an NFL top-caliber quarterback body just happens to be IN his body, is dosed on the same tainted-mescaline that inspired 'Ishtar' ... yes, it's a 'fantasy' movie ... but a bit of a basis in reality is necessary for us to swallow some of the fantasy ... 'Cinderella' is a fantasy movie too but it takes a fairy godmother to turn mice into horses to pull the carriage, not just put the spirit of a horse into a mouse and suddenly the mouse is as strong as a horse because they have the spirit of a horse ... you need to have a little cornerstone of reality to work with to build the fantasy house, OK? well, I've spent far too much time bitching about all this lol ... but once i get going it's a bit of a torrent during the rainy season on a mattress not conjured by a fairy godmother into a boat and the whole tainted-etc etc etc ..by the way, it's probably been pointed out but if you switch the letters around in the title of Ishtar you get the correct titleand btw, if you want to get a couple of stars trying to redo an old Hope-Crosby road movie in the last quarter of the 20th century, try the very underrated "Harry and Walter go to New York" with Elliott Gould, James Caan, Michael Cain, Diane Keaton, and lots of other faces you'll recognize ... the studio slashed this movie to hell before release and it was STILL a world away better than Ishtar ... hopefully, this will get a restoration tho it is doubtful ... they finally gave Peckinpah's 'Billy the Kid' it's due by restoring it but I'm afraid director Mark Rydell isn't gonna get the same and overdue re-issue Peckinpah got ... but rent the movie anyway ... i don't think it'd be inappropriate for kids over 11 or 12 these days ... tho they might not get some of the subtler jokes and it's a period piece which sometimes doesn't work well for younger ones ,... but hey, you and the wife can watch and enjoy :)

*Spoiler/plot- 1987, Hoffman and Beatty are untalented songwriters and singers on their last dollar that get the US government to ship them to a Northern African country were they get involved with CIA and questionable comedy.*Special Stars- Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Charles Grodin, Carol Kane, Jack Weston- Dir: Elaine May *Theme- Volunteers working for the US government is always a bad idea.*Based on- Hope and Crosby 'road' films *Trivia/location/goofs-Not interesting enough to matter *Emotion- Not as bad as widely reported. But, a somewhat forgettable satire of the 'Hope and Crosby' road films. The film's producers try a chance with real life pals, Hoffman and Beatty. A blind camel and flock of vultures are funnier that the male leads here. The boring cliché spy intrigues get worse and worse with musical accompaniment.