The Awkward Movie Challenge: Ishtar
Mike:
Dear Jeffrey,
First of all, I want to thank you for writing such a thorough and thoughtful synopsis of the movie. If that had been my chore, I would have written, “Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty sing shitty songs for 30 minutes before assholing around in the desert for six hours. The end.” That being said, the next time you have the urge to suggest we watch a movie like Ishtar, please hire an escaped mental patient to beat me with a sack of doorknobs instead, as that would be far more pleasurable.
OK, I agree with you that this isn’t the worst movie ever made — Nothing But Trouble with Chevy Chase is — but it is very, very bad. One of the main problems with Ishtar is that so much of the intended-humor pivots on their lousy stage act. The key to a funny/bad act like, say, Spinal Tap, is that they aren’t completely devoid of talent. Spinal Tap’s songs are dumb, but wittily so, and the group plays and sings them with ability and conviction. Dustin Hoffman and (particularly) Warren Beatty can’t even carry a tune, so watching them caper on stage while massacring standards is painful. Scenes in which audiences actually enjoy listening to them caterwauling are simply baffling. Instead of Beatty, the producer should have cast someone like Bill Murray, whose voice is goofy enough to get laughs but solid enough to sell the idea that he could be a semi-professional singer. Of course, Warren Beatty produced this turd, so I guess that wasn’t really an option.
Still, recasting Ishtar would not have been enough to save it. A comedy should have some jokes. I had trouble locating the “lots and lots of jokes” of which you spoke. Warren Beatty’s inability to pronounce the word “schmuck” is not a joke. Beatty and Hoffman farting around with a camel for an eternity is not a joke. Hoffman impersonating a Berber auctioneer by screaming gibberish is not a joke. The funniest part of the movie was when a couple of guys started running an eardrum-shattering brick sander right outside my window, drowning out about seven minutes of dialogue. I just imagined Hoffman and Beatty were reciting lines from an old episode of “Newsradio” and laughed my ass off.
The late, great Phil Hartman. (From ‘Newsradio’).
Mike gives Ishtar … one camel hump!
Love,
Mike
P.S.: I was just kidding about that “escaped mental patient” thing. Please don’t ever do that.
P.P.S.: Nice catch on the Dylan Baker cameo. I wasn’t sure if I was merely hallucinating that there was an actor capable of subtlety in this stink bomb. That guy played one hell of a sympathetic child molester in Happiness!
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Isabelle Adjani's boob was a formative moment in my youth and I am forever indebted to Elaine May for it.
1Michael:
You are incorrect about Nothing But Trouble. The worst movie ever made is The Room. That's what I want to see next: you two duking it out over The Room.
2I disagree. 'The Room' is, indeed, an example of amateurish art-house masturbation, but it does not come close to offending all five senses the way 'Nothing But Trouble' does (I'm pretty sure that I can taste, feel, and smell that movie, and it tastes, feels, and smells like pee). 'The Room' is more likely to inspire yawning than duking. 'Nothing But Trouble' inspires copious puking.
3I haven't seen the Room, because I would only want to see it in the proper context, which is with a crowd of people throwing spoons at the screen. Which I can do easily because I live in the city where the phenomenon started, but I just haven't gotten around to it, because the city I am speaking of is Los Angeles, where we don't really get around to things. I have only seen bits and pieces of Nothing But Trouble, but I would say just on principle, a bad movie made by earnest amateurs will never be as bad as a bad movie made by successful entertainers. Therefore, Segretto wins this argument.
The worst movie I've ever seen, you ask? (Please note: you didn't ask.) The only movie I've ever walked out on is The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. But that was mostly because all I wanted to do was make out with my girlfriend and the brutal rape scenes were getting in my way. I really disliked Rachel Getting Married, but everyone else loves that movie, so I'm not prepared to discount it entirely. In my opinion, a truly bad movie must either fail to deliver on great promise (as Rachel Getting Married) or, as Segretto smartly puts it, be entirely offensive. Possible contenders (and possible contenders for a future Movie Challenge): The Doom Generation, Friends with Money, The Holiday, Mystic River, Tideland, Waiting ..., Across the Universe. Discuss.
4Oops... I'm afraid the McCarron/Segretto stand-off is nullified because I mistook 'The Room' for the Netflix-distributed film 'Room' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417096/). I have not seen 'The Room', but Jeffrey, I totally agree with you about 'Rachel Getting Married', which was like watching a wedding attended by a bunch of drips and one incongruously self-satisfied asshole in real time. Complete garbage.
I've never walked out of a movie, but I definitely had the urge to flee screaming from the theater while watching 'Ellie Parker'.
5The worst movie ever made, for exactly the reasons argued so far, is Babel. There is even literal urination to work in the other senses. I had to update all my 1's to 2's on Netflix after seeing Babel, because none of them were bad enough to share a ranking with that turd.
6Hmm. A fine choice. That was a bad, awful, bad movie.
7FUCK YOU, GOOD SIRRAH! Doom Generation is what led me to my unhealthy obsession with Rose McGowan. And Waiting was awesome. However, maybe you lack the proper context, having never served tables. Or maybe you just have your head up your ass.
I will Agree Mystic River was shit but I'm surprised you didn't cite the mental masturbation of everyone's favorite deaf actress Marlee Matlin in "What the Bleep Do We Know?"
Harmon and I have had this dance before: I was not offended by Babel. Just bored to tears.
8There are very few movies I would defend to the death as being unquestionably bad. I am not even willing to go there with "The Doom Generation," because I know what Gregg Araki was going for (and I respect his skill as a filmmaker ... "Mysterious Skin" and "Smiley Face" are both fantastic films) ... I just think he missed the mark wildly.
However, I can say with absolute conviction that regardless of whether or not one has waited tables, "Waiting ..." is a terrible movie. I quote Premiere: "Waiting is, at its root, a heaping handful of almost-funny ideas cobbled together without much skill for shaping a story. The result is that one in five provokes a smile, while the other four make the viewers slightly sick that they now have to remember what they just saw."
9My suggestions for terrible movies:
U-Turn
Swimming with Sharks
A Prairie Home Companion (which I walked out of)
Bringing Out the Dead
Demonlover
Mutual Appreciation
The Ninth Gate (so bad I had to read the book just to see if it was as bad... it was)
And I agree with "Mystic River" and "Doom Generation." I liked "Friends with Money" and "The Holiday," but the sadist in me wants you to choose "The Holiday" so that Mike will be forced to watch it. Sorry, Mike!
10Oof. Yeah, 'Swimming with Sharks' is a stinker. When the dramatic centerpiece of a movie is a paper cut, you know you're in for trouble. I remember liking 'Bringing out the Dead' when I saw it in the theater, but it is so universally loathed that I may need to rewatch it for reevaluation purposes.
But Elise, instead of expressing your sadism by recommending 'The Holiday', you can just punch me in the face when you get home. At least that won't last 136 minutes.
11I remember liking Swimming with Sharks, but now that I'm more of a seasoned film-goer, I might have a different opinion. Bringing Out the Dead I HATED, but my friend Matt likes it so much that I have to give it another shot one day. Prairie Home Companion was totally bizarre and awful. And Mutual Appreciation was unwatchable, even though I love Bishop Allen. The rest, I have not seen. I think we definitely need to do a viewing of The Holiday, because Elise really needs to see how truly awful that movie is.
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