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Ishtar
Directed by
Elaine May
PG-13
1987
1h 47m
Comedy
,
Action
,
and more
4.7
40%
39%
4.5
Add to Watchlist
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 C.I.A., the Emir of Ishtar, and the rebels trying to overthrow his regime.
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Amazon Video
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Apple TV
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Fandango at Home
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Cast of Ishtar
Warren Beatty
Lyle Rogers / Producer
Dustin Hoffman
Chuck Clarke
Isabelle Adjani
Shirra Assel
Charles Grodin
Jim Harrison
Jack Weston
Marty Freed
Tess Harper
Willa
Carol Kane
Carol
Aharon Ipalé
Emir Yousef
Fijad Hageb
Abdul
David Margulies
Mr. Clarke
Rose Arrick
Mrs. Clarke
Julie Garfield
Dorothy
Cristine Rose
Siri Darma
Robert V. Girolami
Bartender
Abe Kroll
Mr. Thomopoulos
Hannah Kroll
Mrs. Thomopoulos
Herb Gardner
Rabbi Pierce
Bill Moor
U.S. Consul
Edgar Smith
Prof. Barnes
J.C. Cutler
Omar
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Ishtar Ratings & Reviews
The New Yorker
Richard Brody
An elaborately antic musical of startling, even disturbing, originality.
48 Hills
Dennis Harvey
Terribly handsome (as shot by the great Vittorio Storaro), sleekly entertaining, usually amusing, and sometimes flat-out hilarious.
Deep Focus Review
Brian Eggert
What works about the film is the shared sense of artistic yearning.
Chicago Tribune
Gene Siskel
The film fails at every level.
Los Angeles Times
Sheila Benson
It is a smart, generous, genuinely funny affair. Sometimes, like the camel who almost ambles away with the picture, it's longish in the tooth, but it is based on an extremely astute vision of life.
Gannett News Service
Jack Garner
There are three or four memorable sequences in Ishtar -- the purchase of the blind camel, the use of fake Arabic in an auction scene, and the first horrendous singing performance of stupid songs. But the film lacks pace and consistent tone.
TIME Magazine
Richard Schickel
Reasonably genial and diverting.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Roger Hurlburt
Ishtar is cute, reasonably pleasant entertainment, but no motion picture oasis for Hoffman, Beatty or their fans.
Chicago Tribune
Dave Kehr
Ishtar is a good movie, but you can't help but wonder if, lurking somewhere in those cans of outtakes, there isn't a great movie, too.
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
This Elaine May comedy was the most underappreciated commercial movie of 1987. It isn't quite as good as May's previous features, but it's still a very funny work by one of this country's greatest comic talents.
Orlando Sentinel
Jay Boyar
Though far from a masterpiece, the movie is often hilarious in a sly, seemingly improvisational way.
People Magazine
People Staff
Beatty goes along with the casting joke of playing the nerd sidekick to Hoffman's slick loverboy. But zany antics aren't his forte. Hoffman's impishness serves the film better until the sheer weight of the production grinds him down
TV Guide
TV Guide Staff
An incredible box office loser and, to be frank, far from great, Ishtar is still not nearly as awful as many would have it.
Flavorwire
Jason Bailey
It's a film that resists categorization, staking a claim on a weird, absurdist territory of its own. For that, in the maddeningly generic landscape of '80s multiplexes, it was crucified. Now it's celebrated. And rightfully so.
The Dissolve
Noel Murray
If Ishtar has a personal stamp, it's not in what it has to say about Reagan-era militarism, but in what it has to say about collaboration, and how well-meaning people can goose each other to greatness-and folly.
Variety
Variety Staff
Desert sequences provide some of the film's high points as Beatty and Hoffman finally develop some genuine rapport under adverse conditions.
New York Times
Janet Maslin
The worst of it is painless; the best is funny, sly, cheerful and, here and there, even genuinely inspired.
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Ishtar is a truly dreadful film, a lifeless, massive, lumbering exercise in failed comedy.
Washington Post
Hal Hinson
Ishtar doesn't attempt enough to be considered a magnificent failure. It's something far less substantial; it's piddling -- a hangdog little comedy with not enough laughs.
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
Ishtar is an unabashed vamp for a pair of household names, and as such it works, often hilariously.
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