Inspired from this thread that brings up Ishtar several times:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=153733
Ok, Ishtar wasn’t good but it wasn’t THAT bad. I actually kind of enjoyed it 
Any bets where this one is going to end up?
Cafe?
IMHO?
Pit?
the possibilities, the possibilities!
I’ve got five bucks on Cafe.
Jeff
Not that bad? It was a disaster!:
Everyone who picked anything other than Cafe Society, pay up.
It was terrible. I’ve seen interviews where even Beatty admitted that.
It’s hilarious. The reason it was a disaster is because it was advertised as an action movie.
Telling the truth is dangerous business
When you play the accordian in a rock 'n roll band!
Oh crap, posted in wrong place. Sorry Mod.
I think Cafe.
The trying to create a song while dying of thirst in the desert…
The blind camel.
The CIA agent saying “careful, I think one might have a rifle…”
It wasn’t THAT bad…
I liked the line “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar”…
Hey! That’s the guy that was at the premiere of Heaven’s Gate too!
It was a financial disaster. However, it’s a pretty good little movie. All of Paul Williams’ songs are a hoot. And the arms auction scene is classic comedy.
Hell, even Jonathan Rosenblum – the Chicago Reader critic whose name used to appear on an ad here on the SDMB – thinks it’s a good film. The most insightful review – pointing out both the strengths and flaws of the film, is this one
As time goes by people are beginning to review the movie, and not its price tag (which is why it got slammed – it was very expensive to make for what is a nice, mid-level comedy). It’s not a great film, by any means, but most of the people slamming it have never seen it and are only repeating the legends.
Well, Jonathan Rosenbaum was on crack. I recall reading his original review in the Reader waaay back in 1987. It went something like this:
- Elaine May is a genius.
- Elaine May made Ishtar.
- Ergo, Ishtar is a work of genius.
The rest of the review was a feeble attempt to square the actual damning evidence of the movie with his irrefutable logic.
Rosenbaum was so enamored of Ishtar that he actually named it one of his top 10 movies of the year!
http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~ejohnson/critics/rosenbaum.html
(Those wishing further proof of Rosenbaum’s addled state that year need only note that Norman Mailer’s awful Tough Guys Don’t Dance also made the list.)
Not that Ishtar was absolutely terrible, mind you. It was feebly entertaining. It was even slightly more entertaining than the previous year’s Chevy Chase-Dan Ackroyd vehicle, Spies Like Us, which had a very similar plot. But when you consider that cost a zillion times more than that movie, and consumed the time and energy of much more talented people, you begin to realize why it’s considered a great Hollywood boondoggle.
I’ve seen Ishtar. I had no idea it cost a fortune to make. I thought it was a terrible movie, and complete steaming pile of crap. Now that I know that it cost of a lot of money, I think it is an expensive steaming pile of crap.
Could a movie be less entertaining and more annoying? Probably. But Ishtar sets a standard that other movies will have to strive to live down to.
i didn’t think it was nearly as bad as everyone says. MST3k brought us hundreds of movies that were worse.
Wumpus writes:
> It was even slightly more entertaining than the previous year’s
> Chevy Chase-Dan Ackroyd vehicle, Spies Like Us, which had a
> very similar plot. But when you consider that cost a zillion times
> more than that movie, and consumed the time and energy of
> much more talented people, you begin to realize why it’s
> considered a great Hollywood boondoggle.
Oh, please. Do a little research before you make such a statement. You can find the budgets for both these movies in their IMDb entries. Ishtar had a budget of $40 million and Spies had a budget of $22 million. Ishtar thus cost less than twice as much, not a zillion times as much.
OK, I’ll be a zillion times more careful the next time I throw around a precise and accurate term such as “zillion.”