Screening times:
Saturday, May 24, 8:30 PM
Elaine May | USA | 1987 | 107m
with Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin, Jack Weston
What better month to celebrate groundbreaking comedic talent Elaine May, while we semi-patiently await further news on Crackpot, May’s first narrative feature since Ishtar? Speaking of, we present May's most divisive film as the third and final in a three-part series of Elaine May films, screening on Saturday nights in May.
Two terrible lounge singers get booked to play a gig in a Moroccan hotel but somehow become pawns in an international power play between the C.I.A., the Emir of the (fictional) Middle Eastern nation of Ishtar, and the rebels trying to overthrow his regime.
Elaine May's much-maligned comedy - her fourth and final directorial effort - emerges in more recent times as an incisive examination of masculine inadequacy and codependency, even receiving votes for the Greatest Movie of All Time in the 2022 iteration of the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound decennial polls.
"'Ishtar' is a truly dreadful film, a lifeless, massive, lumbering exercise in failed comedy... This movie is a long, dry slog. It’s not funny, it’s not smart and it’s interesting only in the way a traffic accident is interesting." - Roger Ebert (1987), RogerEbert.com
"Filmmakers from Lena Dunham and Joe Swanberg to Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino have all championed the film in the past few years, finding a sophisticated, self-aware wit and inspirational current in its story of a pair of struggling New York songwriters, long on dreams, short on connections or talent." - Mark Olson (2013), Los Angeles Times
"In 1987, a lot of people claimed that 'Ishtar' wasn’t funny — it was as if they couldn’t allow themselves to laugh. I can only speak for myself, but I think it’s hilarious... Ishtar was May’s last film as a director. Her four films as a director are high points in American moviemaking; there’s nothing else quite like them. She is fearless, absolutely independent and a great artist, and I wish she would step behind the camera again." - Martin Scorsese (2010), The Scorsese Selection
Winner: Worst Director - Razzie Awards, 1988
Nominee: Worst Picture - The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, 1987
