Ishtar. 1987. USA. Written and directed by Elaine May. With Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin, Jack Weston. 107 min.
Elaine May's much-maligned comedy---her fourth and final directorial effort---emerges now as an incisive examination of masculine inadequacy and codependency, a spiritual companion to her earlier masterpiece Mikey and Nicky (1976). Casting Hollywood icons Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman spectacularly against type, May constructs a biting but affectionate portrait of creative and personal failure as embodied by hapless songwriting duo Rogers and Clarke, woefully untalented songwriters who accept a dubious booking in Morocco, only to become entangled in CIA operations and revolutionary politics in the fictional country of Ishtar.
As in Mikey and Nicky, May employs the popular "buddy film" format of the era to prod the fragility beneath masculine performance, particularly through the duo's painfully earnest yet disastrous musical compositions. Their mutual self-delusion becomes simultaneously pathetic and strangely touching---a tragic bromance played as farce.