IshtarMovie Reviews

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Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 80
    Los Angeles Times | Sheila Benson

    A smart, generous, genuinely funny affair. Sometimes, like the camel who almost ambles away with the picture, it's longish in the tooth, but it is based on an extremely astute vision of life. [15 May 1987] Read full review

  • 75
    Chicago Tribune | Dave Kehr

    Ishtar is a good movie, but you can't help but wonder if, lurking somewhere in those cans of outtakes, there isn't a great movie, too. [15 May 1987] Read full review

  • 70
    Variety | David Rooney

    Enter Charles Grodin, who upstages all involved via his savagely comical portrayal of a CIA agent. Read full review

  • 70
    Washington Post | Desson Thomson

    Ishtar is an unabashed vamp for a pair of household names, and as such it works, often hilariously. Read full review

  • 50
    San Francisco Chronicle |

    It's worth seeing the movie just to observe [Grodin's] delicious blend of unctuous manipulation and anti-Communist sanctimoniousness. [15 May 1987] Read full review

  • 50
    The New York Times | Elvis Mitchell

    The worst of it is painless; the best is funny, sly, cheerful and, here and there, even genuinely inspired. [15 May 1987, p.C3] Read full review

  • 40
    Wall Street Journal | Julie Salamon

    Hoffman and Beatty are so tone-deaf they don't even know how to play the songs for deadpan humor. They seem old, white, and without shtick. [14 May 1987, p.26(E)] Read full review

  • 30
    Washington Post | Ann Hornaday

    It's piddling -- a hangdog little comedy with not enough laughs...its spirit rattles around inside it like a marble in an oil drum. Read full review

  • 25
    Christian Science Monitor |

    The funny scenes are as far apart as oases in the Sahara. [22 May 1987] Read full review

  • 12
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    A truly dreadful film, a lifeless, massive, lumbering exercise in failed comedy. Elaine May, the director, has mounted a multimillion-dollar expedition in search of a plot so thin that it hardly could support a five-minute TV sketch. Read full review

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