i undertand that the movie was way over budget and it doesn't have the most coherent plot but i still think hoffman and beatty and even charles grodin are really funny in this movie and as a screwball comedy i think it deserves more recognition than it recieves
shareIt is one of my favorite movies...I watched it in my senior year of high school and laughed til I ached. My friends and I still quote from it "Oh my God, Rabbi Pierce is here". And sing songs from it "Hot fudge love, cherry ripple kisses...gnishes...glishes". It's just a fun film...It gets a little long in places but other than that, the scenes that are funny far outweigh some of the extraneous stuff.
I know folks who like it and folks who didn't get it at all...But I agree with noer86...I don't understand why it has gone down in history as one of the worst movies ever made. I can see someone not appreciating the goofy humor, but please...One if the worst? Far from it.
H.
I think people don't like it for a few reasons. 1) They are not supposed to. Any 'intelligent' person knows perfectly well that it would make them 'stupid' to like this movie cos all the critics say so. Same thing with Vanilla Sky.
2) It is too nice. And fun. Fun and nice = s***. It can't possibly be a clever movie if it is either of these things.
3) On a similar point, the jokes were mostly goofy rather than sharp witted puns and put downs.
4) It has heart. Not many films with that do too well. Forrest Gump is first that springs to mind but most others won't be big box office.
5) People have decided it is cr** before they even press play.
The critics told them to.
Most of the people who hate this movie have never actually seen it - they've just been told that it's really bad.
Kareem - Karem Abdul - Abdul Jabbar
A half hour, like the last half hour? Gimme half hour, like the last half hour.
hello,hello,baby,baby, love you, love you, baby, baby
is gonna change her name to Carol...
Saturday morning, the sound of a lawnmower, it touches my heart...
Hot fudge love, cherry rippled kisses, lip smacking, back-slapping, perfectly delicious! what's the matter, honey?
she said come look, there's a wardrobe of love in my eyes, take your time, look around and see if there's something your size...
Crazy, I want to kiss every inch of you, get in a clinch with you, break off a pinch of you...
I can do this all day...
I apoligize in advance...
[deleted]
Maybe it is one of those films that was light year ahead of it's time like Hudson Hawk.........
are you being serious or what?
because i love "ishtar"
cuz i loved hudson hawk but i was also a teenager at the time soo.. but i still remember loving it
i liked ishtar too and really do think that the comedy was decades ahead of its time
which is fine by me because it is always available for renting
What?! i really like this movie, i remenber watched it when i was very young.
shareI was one of the few who saw this film in theaters and I can agree that it wasn't "that" bad.
However, as I recall, my problem with the film was that the setups were too long and convoluted and the resulting payoff wasn't strong enough to warrant those kind of setups.
Bottomline the audience had to work too hard to get the jokes that weren't that funny. So, IMHO, the problem was really just uneven and slow pacing making the film seem longer.
After all the previous posts....YOU hit it right on the mark. It is a bit funny and charming enough, but goes on about 40% too long in each scene....meaning that the writer/s just had delusions of self-importance. I am impressed seeing it for the first time today, that it is beautifully shot and the work with the animals is very impressive. I mean how do you get a camel or buzzards to work so well in the compositions?
sharei undertand that the movie was way over budget and it doesn't have the most coherent plot
Neither does North by Northwest actually but it was still a big success and a great film. Ishtar by comparison makes more sense.
...but i still think hoffman and beatty and even charles grodin are really funny in this movie and as a screwball comedy i think it deserves more recognition than it recieves
It does. Ishtar is very funny and a very sharp satire. It's flawed mostly because it doesn't have a very strong ending but it's visually quite accomplished and Beatty and Hoffmann are absolutely funny. And the best part of the film is that we are laughing with them and at them. It's also quite pointed in attacking America's Middle-East Foreign Policy and quite gutsy in having it's heroes cast it's lot with rebels and terrorists. The arms auction scene is priceless.
Needless to say, it's far superior to many of the so-called comedies and would-be satires infesting the society today.
"Ça va by me, madame...Ça va by me!" - The Red Shoes
They weren't terrorists. They are only terrorists if they lose. Reagan called Nelson Mandela a terrorist. But he won, and now he's a "hero" a "titan" a "moral giant" of the stature of Gandhi. Which is as it should be, but had his side not prevailed, he would have gone down in history with Benedict Arnold.
But I think you come closer to "getting it" than any of the other comments I've read here. I can't fathom how people think it's "silly, harmless, screwball" etc. I think it's because the movie does what it does so very well - it takes our guys from being just two failures with nothing to set them apart from all the other failures of the world, to being two US citizens the US government is trying to kill - knowing that they are hapless pawns. It's quite believable, and the development of the movie to this point is so sly that people don't even notice they are cheering on the heroes while they resist the government. They may have been hapless in getting to this point, but they were heroic once they got into the situation.
I don't understand how people can call Warren Beatty's character a "moron" or any of that sort of thing. He's naïve, as most Americans are, about the actual role their government plays in the world (we're so naïve we don't even have a word for naïve, we have to borrow the French's word for it!). Lyle is naïve, though he thinks he knows his way around the world with his traditional values. Chuck, too, is naïve - he thinks he's very cynical and sophisticated, but he has no idea either. But by the end of the movie they do. It's true they haven't progressed as songwriters... their performance is more polished, but still risible by contemporary entertainment standards. But as human beings they have grown tremendously, and I find the final scene extremely moving when Shira Assel sees through the real men behind the inept performers.
How can anybody say this movie has a weak ending? Because nobody was killed in the fire fight? Not enough 'splosions to rock the adolescent brain? Too bad for people that feel this way.
I never understood why this movie got panned so bad. I guess it's because perennial Oscar nominees did a movie that wasn't Oscar-worthy. It's a cute comedy with the funniest soundtrack in recorded history.
shareI never understood why this movie got panned so bad.
box office bomb status combined with its two major actors being humongous real-life *beep* gives people something to root against. just watched it, and it's decent. only scene i laughed at was blind camel scene at the market. plot didn't strike me as incoherent. movie on the whole was entirely inoffensive, and had a few scenes beyond the camel one that were well done, but not well enough to induce laughter.
shareI don't get what you mean. It was supposed to be a comedy. You said it's decent but that you only laughed once. How is it decent that? This movie just isn't funny.
share'decent' and 'funny' are different words that mean different things
'decent' is a lower intensity version of 'good'
let's look at woody allen movies:
purple rose of cairo - good movie and funny movie
hollywood ending - neither decent nor good movie, but a funny movie
small time crooks - it's a BAD movie not good or decent, it's also not a funny movie
you will meet a tall dark stranger - decent movie, not a funny movie
do you understand yet?
[deleted]
I walked out of the theater quietly until one of the two friends who saw the movie said it was the worst movie she'd ever seen. I said, "Oh good, it wasn't just me." Years later I rented it as a good laugh with friends but it is indeed truly awful. The laughs come from its awfulness. On the plus side, Isabelle Adjani is truly mouthwatering.
share