Com-ay-dee! Com-ay-dee!
Chuck Clark (Dustin Hoffman) and Lyall Rogers (Warren Beatty) are a bad songwriting duo fruitlessly trying to pen their first hit. They are told by someone in the know to discard the dream of writing a pop masterpiece and to sing the songs of others.
Unfortunately as singers they make great songwriters.
When offered a last chance gig as lounge singers in Ishtar, Morocco, the pair initially say no. But a lack of other prospects and cash eventually impel them to reconsider.
A little research might have saved them a lot of trouble. Upon arriving in Morocco they quickly learn that the capital city is on the verge of civil war, with anti-government forces amassing and widespread protests everywhere. Tensions are high and security is tight, which makes it a baffling development when Chuck agrees to trade suitcases with a woman he met 15 seconds ago in an airport.
He doesn’t tell Lyall of this decision, except to inform him that he now has no passport to make the next flight to Ishtar.
Turn about being fair play, Lyall neglects to tell Chuck about his meeting with Jim the CIA agent (Charles Grodin), who suggested that Chuck’s liaison with this mysterious woman means he is likely a rebel agent himself.
With both men hiding secrets from one another, and the CIA label,ing Chuck a traitor, the stage is set for an hour of mistaken identity covert surveillance and stumbling and bumbling from all parties.
Which is exactly what we get, although you’ll notice I didn’t say ‘and the laughs that accompany such antics’? Because there aren’t any.
Even as the worlds worst songwriting duo (this side of the Good Charlotte brothers) become embroiled and implicated in an international conspiracy they can’t manage to squeeze out a chuckle. And when they are marked for death I didn’t laugh at the unexpectedness of it all, I crossed my fingers that they would be killed, thereby ending this dull wet fish of a film.
Despite that and the common perception, Ishtar isn’t the worst comedy of all time. It’s just another lousy one.
Final Rating – 5 / 10. When the big running ‘joke’ is that Dustin Hoffman is better looking and better with the ladies than Warren Beatty, we were always in trouble.
