People often mention “Ishtar” when discussing the worst films ever made. It’s apparently so bad that director Elaine May (“A New Leaf”) has never helmed a movie since. Yes, the box-office bomb has made quite a notorious reputation for itself but I do not think that it warrants it. It is definitely a bad movie but I have seen far worse.

“Ishtar” follows the misadventures of Chuck Clarke (Dustin Hoffman “The Graduate”, “Hook”) and Lyle Rogers (Warren Beatty “Bugsy”). They are two terrible songwriters that get a booking at a hotel in Morocco but get caught up in the game of espionage in the mythical nation of Ishtar as the Americans and Soviets jostle for control.

Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty gives awful performances as Chuck and Lyle. Beatty in particular seems completely lost like he has no idea what is going on. Throughout the picture, we hear them sing bland songs without any real sense of tune and that is supposed to make us laugh. They also buy a blind camel and both mistake a female guerrilla fighter for a man. Their antics are not remotely funny. The only character that I wanted to see more of was Emir Yousef (Aharon Ipalé “The Mummy”).

“Ishtar” is certainly a lousy movie but it’s never aggressively bad. The film has such a thin plot that it was probably doomed to fail. It cost tens of millions of dollars but besides the helicopter scene, I do not see what could have cost the filmmakers so money. It’s an awkward comedy with big stars but there are worse awkward comedies with big stars, just look at the abysmal gangster comedy “City Heat” with Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. Why is that movie not talked about so harshly? If you go in to “Ishtar” with expectations as low as I did, you are unlikely to be disappointed.