Word: ishtars
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...HARD to excuse writer-director Elaine May for spending $40 million on Ishtar. The movie is no Heaven's Gate-style disaster--it's pleasant and silly and has some truly hilarious moments. But it just makes you wonder what she spent all that money...
...have something to do with the fact that Ishtar features two of Hollywood's hottest stars. Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman play Lyle Rodgers and Chuck Clark, a singer-songwriting duo trying to make it in New York. Their only problem is that they are bad. Really bad. Even their agent (Jack Weston) tells them, "You're old, you're white, you have no shtick...
...moment the movie switches from New York to Ishtar, a small fictional republic next to Morocco, however, it starts to look like and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom rip-off, complete with 7th century artifacts, a beautiful woman and a complicated plot. May wastes a lot of time on the political intrigue which traps Rodgers and Clark and diverts attention away from the lively interplay between the unlikely heroes...
...much fun with Beatty and Hoffman that she seems to forget that there's anyone else in the cast. Isabelle Adjani plays Shirra Assel, a member of the Communist insurgant group which opposes the government of Ishtar. Both Rodgers and Clark fall in love with her, though it's hard to tell why. She isn't around very much and her character is pretty silly. At one point, she flashes her breasts in the middle of and airport to prove she's a woman (doesn't everyone?), and although we're supposed to believe she's devoted to the revolution...
While Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty and Isabelle Adjani are filming Ishtar in New York City, everyone has taken a vow of silence. In the circumstances, this may have made more sense than taking a vow of poverty or chastity, but it put the rumor mill into overdrive. Worst was the word that the breathtaking Adjani was playing a young man. Such casting would have been a high offense against Gallic gifts, as Adjani proved anew in a recent photo session modeling her favorite clothes from the collections of such designers as Paris' Azzedine Alaia. But Adjani admirers, fear...