There are some interesting themes in Ishtar (notably, friends betraying one another), but it’s primarily intended to be a light comedy.
The first twenty minutes (up until they fly to Ishtar) are just plain great. Hoffman and Beatty are hilarious as stupid and untalented muscians. The problem is that their humor is both deadpan and dead on. Usually when stupid people are portrayed in comedies, they’re wacky goofballs. Rogers and Clark are more like real life – they do dumb things, but in a very realistic way, and if you’re expecting wacky, you’re in for a disappointment. Some of the funniest lines are vastly understated – like when Hoffman says after one particularly bad lyric, “when you’re hot, you’re hot.” You see this type of person all the time (go to any of the electronic vanity presses like Xlibris or iUniverse) – people with no appreciable talent who think they’re artistic geniuses.
But the humor is subtle and comes out of character – and since it’s not obvious, it sometimes takes a viewing or two to “get it” (sort of like “The Fatal Glass of Beer,” which also gets funnier each time you see it).
Once they get to Ishtar, the film flags. There are some good parts (Hoffman and Beatty so dumb he doesn’t realize Isabel Adjani is a woman – especially with Beatty playing off his image as a womanizer. The line “Are these breasts?” is a hoot). But much of the middle section is routine humor.
Once they go to get the camel, though, things pick up. Beatty going to the bazaar and trying to find someone named Mohammed, the blind camel, and, of course, the near classic arms auction scene are all first class.
OTOH, the ending was rushed.
Add Paul Williams delighfully bad songs, and the film is pretty entertaining overall. It certainly stands up to repeated viewings.
The hostility toward the movie was mostly due to the price tag, plus the fact that the humor went over people’s heads.