Ishtar

Good film. The songs are supposed to be bad. Is it supposed to be a laugh out loud comedy?. Watchable actors and nice scenery. Give it a go.

Sad for people who can't get it!

You need to at least like the era of Simon and Garfunkel to enjoy it.

I don't quite see how or why people despise this film so much? I first saw it by chance one evening, aware of its reputation as one of the 'biggest box office bombs' in film history, and expected the worst.

However, I don't think those lowered expectations were the reason I came out smiling, indeed, since then I've shown the film to a few friends who have also been surprised by the film and some of its lines remain as favourite quotes between us.

I think a 'modern' audience has to look at this as if they were approaching a Ben Stiller/Owen Wilson comedy with Dustin Hoffman the Stiller role and Beatty is Wilson. The opening 20 minutes alone are a masterclass in editing, jumping around in time to brilliantly establish the relationship between the two main characters, their own ambitions, neuroses and delusions before sending us off into the rather silly plot of intrigue in a Moroccan country that lends the film its title.

Yes, it's a very silly movie, but what's wrong with being a very silly movie? Perhaps it is the 'dramatic' past of its two leads that confounded audiences? Perhaps people just didn't get that their songs are supposed to be awful? (Though I find them endearingly bad, and, if you search on Youtube, you'll find footage of fellow Ishtar fan Quentin Tarantino gleefully singing the words to 'Hot Fudge Love' from memory)

Ultimately the film has one goal; to make you laugh, and it always makes me laugh. Regardless of its reputation that makes it a huge success in my eyes.

Agonizing, excruciating, harrowing, torturing, torturous, torturesome.

Bleak, comfortless, discomforting, forbidding, inhospitable, spartan, uncomfortable; biting, inclement, intemperate, wild; rigorous, strict, stringent; agonizing, heartbreaking, heartrending, painful, wretched; crushing, grinding, overwhelming, wearing; insufferable, insupportable, intolerable, unbearable, unendurable; harrowing, tortuous; bad, disagreeable, hostile, unfriendly, unpleasant.