Ishtar

In contrast to the relative timelessness of Elaine May’s first three features, ISHTAR is a satirical farce plainly grounded in the era of Ronald Reagan, where a peace settlement between a North African dictator and his rebellious populace can be negotiated by a cynical American show-biz agent on behalf of his talentless songwriter clients. These are Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, cast against type as a gauche Texan without sexual confidence and a self-styled stud calling himself “The Hawk”. Yet the most striking thing about the disastrous U.S. reception of this comedy was the blindness of its audience to the political target being skewered – American stupidity in the Middle East, whether innocent (Beatty and Hoffman) or corrupt (Charles Grodin’s CIA agent), years before our dimwitted American assaults on Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan yielded so much bad music of their own. May’s unique capacity to make all her monstrous characters (including Adjani’s “leftist” rebel) weirdly lovable is what keeps this movie tender even when its ridicule is at its most corrosive. And the fact that May, Beatty and Hoffman all collaborated with Paul Williams on composing their awful/wonderful songs only proves the extent to which competitive team spirit prevails. (Jonathan Rosenbaum)