ISHTAR no stars

A disaster, both critically and commercially, "Ishtar" basically ended the career of Elaine May as a major player in Hollywood, (she both wrote it and directed it), while stars Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty were lucky to emerge with anything like their reputations intact. I suppose it was May's attempt to do a tribute to the 'Road' movies but with two actors rather than two comics in the lead. Is it as bad as people say? Well, frankly yes. It's not that the corny gags aren't funny; they're just not funny in this context, with these actors. It might have worked, and I do stress might have, if Beatty and Hoffman had been replaced with, say, May herself and her former partner Mike Nichols and done as a series of sketches...but then, on second thoughts. So bad, in fact, it makes the Mike Nichols directed Beatty/Jack Nicholson vehicle "The Fortune" look like "Citizen Kane"... or even "Duck Soup".