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I did recently see Ishtar and it's... okay. Didn't think it was as horrible as it's reputation is so much as "Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty together this Will Be EPIC" expectations when they just were aiming for a silly movie.

Howard the Duck ?

The copy on the VHS box was insanely compelling, however. So much so that I probably rented it a half dozen times after hating it the first time, because the movie described just in no way reminded me of the movie I had seen.

Have you seen “The Fortune”? Warren Beatty & Jack Nicholson. Directed by Mike Nichols. Weird, but great looking misfire. 1975.

I have the trailer stuck in my head forever because of Red Letter Media. Next they will be hailed as the true messengers of GOD! I've never seen it

Yah. I brought it up because when I DJ'd late nights on the college radio station (in Claremont), we had a running gag about Ishtar. Including acting out some of the worst dialog on-air.

I was very impressed by The Odyssey which I watched yesterday. It is the best movie I've seen in many years. But then I'm a Christopher Nolan fan. All his movies are grownup and intelligent. Is Nolan Hollywood?

My new life motto - "A competent form of awful." Thanks for that!

The best reference to that movie was in the @alexwinter.com movie Freaked. A stage riot is happening and Calvert DeForest exclaims he hasn’t seen anything this hectic since the open night of Ishtar!

I remember thinking it was funny

my dad loved it - he always liked the scene with Hoffman and Beatty singing (very badly) in an empty club before they got the new gig. Idk.

It's certainly not a great movie but I was moderately entertained.

Ishtar was the punch line to a strip in Mad Magazine that I didn't fully get as a 10yo. Several years later, it was on TV when my dad and I were flipping through channels, so I caught a few minutes near the end. I thus remain low-level curious, and your post doesn't diminish that feeling.

My best friend & I saw it at a $1 screening & the entire audience was laughing all throughout. I get what you're saying & maybe I would feel the same way watching it now, but back in that moment with that crowd, it was hilarious. Not $51m funny, but funny enough.

Nah that movie rules.

"Blandly bad" is how I recall describing it. It's bad in a completely unmemorable way, which is death for a comedy like that. For a decade all people remembered about it was "it was bad".

I actually like Ishtar...I think it would have been better received without A-list dramatic actors in the leads. I'd love to get my hands on the soundtrack, too - their songs are the best part of the film.

One of two films I have ever walked out of, the other being "Peggy Sue Got Married".

"a competent form of awful" I'm stealing that!

Elaine May struggling to get into a sexy one-shoulder nightgown in A New Leaf... (my mom's favorite movie moment.)

A film all about how if your two stars decide they know better than the director, we get an absolute mess.

Ishtar is my mom's favorite movie to this day. She will defend it to the death.

“just a competent form of awful.” Spot. On.

I'm gonna defend the New York part of it. I don't hate the rest of it, it's sort of meh, but I would've loved the hell out of a version where they never left the city. Them trying to sell "Little Darlin" to an aghast audience was one of the funniest things I saw in the 80s.

My cousins and I rented it one summer, because it was supposed to be a comedy...we turned it off halfway through. And we only got *that* far because we kept saying "It *has* to start getting funny soon, right?"

Ishtar Ish Terrible

Yeah It’s really bad

If you squint, you can see what she’s trying to do. Grodin is the only one who understands what movie he’s in.

Oh God, awful. Awful. Awful. I think it scarred me for life even though I bailed out of it early.

Rented it once. Could only make it through the first 15 minutes. Maybe one day I’ll try again.