NeueZiel wrote:
Ishtar rates extra high for me on the worst film ever list because the only time I watched it was in a waiting room for an intensive care unit at 2 am in the morning. My aunt had been in a horrible accident where she had flown through the windshield after hitting a truck pulling a boat. She did survive and is able to walk about as well as I do (aside from the fact she's blind in one eye) but we were all sure she was going to die at the time and I recall the night well. It was about 7 of us, mom, dad, sister, her mom and husband, some other relatives. We were all just quiet and someone turns on the tv to liven up the mood and its f***ing Ishtar and we all watch it. I remember asking my mom, "Hey is this that really bad movie everyone is watching in hell in that one Farside comic strip?" "Yes" "Oh."
The worst part is that I thought it was going to be terrible in a "hahaha this is so goofy" MST3k way like Hercules and the Captive Women because I recognized Ishtar from mythology. Instead it was some abortion of a musical comedy that was just dreadful.
Ishtar? Did somone say
Ishtar!? Oh, my God: HELL YEAH!
I actually
saw the blankety-blank movie when it was being shown in a movie theatre one fine evening.
I too might have thought it was going to be a costume drama associated with the Babylonian goddess of love and war.
The most succinct way to describe the movie is with a smiley:
Here's a longer description:
Ishtar was a two-headed hydra such that each head bit off the other's neck.
It began as a painfully unfunny buddy picture where the jokes were "telegraphed" (in other words, the actors let you know what the punchline
was going to be long before it was delivered). Then, director Elaine May threw her two leading actors (Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty)
into the least successful remake of the original
Star Wars since Cerberus was a puppy. (How's that for a mythological allusion?)
Poor Isabelle Adjani, she didn't know she was getting into the role of Princess Leia in that remake. Indeed, that movie soured me on the
original
Star Wars and the whole first trilogy (
A New Hope,
The Empire Strikes Back, and
Return of the Jedi).