Movie Review: Ishtar (1987)

Genre: Musical Comedy  

Director: Elaine May  

Starring: Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin  

Running Time: 107 minutes  

Synopsis: In New York, Chuck and Lyle (Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty) are a pair of hapless, dimwitted, and talentless songwriters. Their bottom-of-the-barrel agent (Jack Weston) offers them a gig at a hotel in Morocco. The pair land at the adjacent desert kingdom of Ishtar, where they are immediately sucked into Cold War intrigue featuring a history-changing map, left-wing revolutionary Shirra (Isabelle Adjani), and CIA Agent Jim Harrison (Charles Grodin).

What Works Well: The blind camel and the vultures deliver excellent performances.

What Does Not Work As Well: About half the running time is consumed by atrocious song snippets being performed badly; the other half features Hoffman and Beatty lost in the desert with a blind camel, repeating the same dialogue about wasting their lives. Both leading men are miscast and too old for their roles, Beatty in particular floating through the movie with a singular expression of stunned idiocy. Elaine May's writing (witless) and directing (flat) infuse every scene with the awkwardness of bad improvisation. The political context and plot details are sketched-in afterthoughts; none of the characters offer anything resembling depth or evolution; and the comedy moments are either devastatingly unfunny or conspicuously absent.

Key Quote:

Song lyrics co-written by Chuck and Lyle: Telling the truth can be dangerous business / Honest and popular don’t go hand in hand / If you admit that you can play the accordion / No one will hire you for a rock and roll band.

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Movie Review: Beethoven (1992)

A child-friendly comedy, Beethoven offers harmless laughs in the story of an amiable dog adopting a family and guiding them in and out of various messes.

A St. Bernard puppy escapes from evil veterinarian Dr. Varnick (Dean Jones) and his two dognappers (Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt), and makes its way to the suburban home of George Newton (Charles Grodin). The three Newton kids Ryce, Ted and Emily are immediately enamoured with the puppy, and their mother Alice (Bonnie Hunt) helps convince the dubious George to keep it.

The dog is given the name Beethoven and grows into a big, slobbering, messy but lovable adult. Beethoven becomes an essential family member, protecting George from shady business investors, supporting Ted against school bullies, rescuing Emily from a pool incident and helping Ryce meet her cute classmate. But Dr. Varnick still has nefarious plans, placing Beethoven and all the Newtons in peril.

Co-produced by Ivan Reitman and directed by Brian Levant, Beethoven delivers family-suitable laughs, yuks and yukky laughs. The script by Edmond Dantès and Amy Holden Jones stays within all the safe zones for young children with just a few zingers thrown in for the adults to enjoy, and with a big friendly dog as the center of attention and three kids to interact with, the humour is easy to find.

To support young attention spans the narrative structure is episodic, as Beethoven gets a succession of relatively short set-pieces to demonstrate his smarts. A few end in riots of laughter, including the escapades of the malicious investor couple (David Duchovny and Patricia Heaton) seeking to steal George's business. Dr. Varrick's heartless plot supplies the overarching wickedness connecting the introduction to the climax, but of course he is up against a wholesome family pulling together.

The visuals are smooth, Levant often adopting a dog's point of view as a few other 4-legged friends of Beethoven woof their way into the story. Mercifully, just the one musical montage sneaks in, here used to fast-track Beethoven's growth from cute and small to still cute but not-so-small.

Fully aware who the real star is, the human actors easily slip into support mode, Charles Grodin playing up his set-upon dad persona, Bonnie Hunt countering with the sympathetic mom adept at finding her husband's soft spots. Dean Jones is the caricaturish villain, staying just on the right side of not-too-scary, while his sidekicks chase after bumbling laughs, both Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt paying their dues in relatively early roles.

Full of energy if not originality, Beethoven is easy viewing.



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The Movies Of Charles Grodin

All movies starring Charles Grodin and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Seems Like Old Times (1980)

Ishtar (1987)

Midnight Run (1988)

Beethoven (1992)

Dave (1993)

While We're Young (2014)

The Comedian (2016)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Seems Like Old Times (1980)

A meek comedy, Seems Like Old Times attempts to recreate the screwball vibe of the 1930s and 1940s but falls flat.

Author Nick Gardenia (Chevy Chase) is abducted from an isolated cabin overlooking Big Sur by two goons, and forced to rob a bank in Carmel. Now a wanted man, Nick escapes his captors and makes his way to the house of his ex-wife Glenda Parks (Goldie Hawn), a kind hearted defence attorney. She is now married to district attorney Ira (Charles Grodin), who has been tapped by the Governor to be the next state attorney general.

Nick appeals to Glenda for help, and also starts to try and win her heart back. In a series of increasingly frantic episodes she keeps him hidden from Ira, who starts to become suspicious as his wife's behaviour grows more erratic.

Written for the screen by Neil Simon and directed by Jay Sandrich, Seems Like Old Times is repetitive, boring and homebound. Although a few good laughs are delivered in isolation, the film runs out of ideas and energy by about the 20 minute mark when Nick arrives at Glenda's house. What follows is 80 minutes of contrived set-pieces consisting of Nick hiding, Glenda covering for him and Ira seething.

Simon's material normally contains a reliable level of quality, but not here. The dearth of ideas is sometimes shocking, as evidenced by repeating the hide-under-the-bed trick, as well as as the gate-crash-the-party episode. For a simple short duration comedy to recycle its own already feeble jokes is inexcusable.

Sandrich spent his directing career in television, and this was his only cinematic outing. The film has all the imagination of a sitcom, with most of the action confined to the Parks house and cheap props like the gaggle of dogs and criminal employees overused and then dropped when it's time to wrap things up.

Chevy Chase delivers his usual smug-but-stupid persona while Hawn often resorts to wide-eyed hysteria. Grodin emerges with some credit as the straightman husband running out of patience with his far from convincing wife.

Seems Like Old Times carries the double meaning of rekindling Nick and Glenda's spark and recalling the glory days of screwball comedies, but on both counts fails to deliver good times.

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Movie Review: Midnight Run (1988)

A buddy comedy road trip action film, Midnight Run collects mostly good things from its various genre components and assembles an enjoyable romp.

In Los Angeles, ex-cop Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) is a bounty hunter hired by bail bondsman Eddie Moscone (Joe Pantoliano) to find and retrieve mob accountant John "the Duke" Mardukas (Charles Grodin), who has gone into hiding. John stole $15 million from mobster Jimmy Serrano (Dennis Farina) and donated it to charity. In addition to mobster goons, John is also being chased by FBI Special Agent Alonzo Mosely (Yaphet Kotto) as well as Jack's rival, bounty hunter Marvin Dorfler (John Ashton).

Jack has no trouble locating and capturing John in New York, but transferring him back to LA by the designated deadline proves troublesome. John has a fear of flying, which means the cross-country journey switches to trains, buses and cars, with the two bickering men constantly while having to dodge Mosely, Marvin and Serrano's men. Along the way the high-strung Jack and the low-key John get to know each other, and eventually discover they have more in common than Jack cares to admit.

Coming off the success of Beverly Hills Cop, director Martin Brest teams up with star Robert De Niro, looking for lighter fare after The Untouchables. The result is a bouncy opposites-attract cross-America journey, featuring an unlikely emerging friendship between two superficially polar-opposite men. The film never dawdles in any one place geographically or contextually, Brest hustling the action along and making excellent use of various locations and a cast deep in supporting talent.

Midnight Run does go on much longer than it needs to. The film clocks in at 126 minutes, and there is no reason for what is essentially a lightweight comedy to drag on for more than two hours. The George Gallo script runs out of the best ideas early on, and the second half of the film features plenty of regurgitation, both in the slowly evolving dynamic between Jack and John and in the repetitive action scenes. The FBI and Serrano's men botch several opportunities each to get their man, and after a while all the incidents of governmental and villainous incompetence start to meld together.

But the film works most of the time, thanks in large part to the central relationship between accountant-criminal John Mardukas and jagged bounty hunter Jack Walsh. Charles Grodin as Mardukas is smooth, calm and the perfect foil for Robert De Niro's passive-aggressive but resourceful Walsh, and the strength of the script resides in the two men's journey from hostility to civility.

The action scenes are more patchy in conception and execution, and feature the usual assortment of shootouts and chases with occasional helicopter interventions. The best comic lines come from the boorish Marvin Dorfler, a more dense and sloppy version of Walsh and not afraid to express his unfiltered thoughts in all their foul-mouthed glory.

Midnight Run extends its sprint into a dogged marathon, but enjoys plenty of quality junctures along the way.

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Movie Review: While We're Young (2014)

A dramatic comedy about generational gaps, While We're Young starts with strong ideas but meanders into mundane territory in search of bogus conflict.

Josh and Cornelia (Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts) are a childless couple drifting into middle age, and losing touch with their lifelong friends who are now all preoccupied with children. Josh is a documentary filmmaker with a bright future behind him, and his latest project is an incomprehensible sociological treatise 10 years in the making and still unfinished. Cornelia is getting tired of her husband's ineptitude and carries guilt feelings about her inability to conceive. Her dad Leslie (Charles Grodin) helped Josh early in his career, but now believes his son-in-law has failed to fulfill his potential.

Josh and Cornelia meet the much younger hipster couple Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried). Jamie is also an aspiring documentarian and full of admiration for Josh's early work. The two couples start to socialize, and Josh and Cornelia get a boost of energy from their new younger friends. Jamie launches a new film project to record in-person meetings with social media friends, and Josh is happy to collaborate. But a hallucinogenic episode between Cornelia and Jamie causes stress, and all relationships begin to unravel when Leslie secures financial support for Jamie's project while dismissing Josh's appeals for help.

Directed and written by Noah Baumbach, While We're Young works well as a sly commentary on the differences between Generation X and the Millennials. The first half of the film benefits from the sense of discovery experienced by Josh and Cornelia as their creativity, fitness and sex drives are all kick started after interacting with the younger, cooler and seemingly less complicated Jamie and Darby.

And there is plenty of true irony and opportunities for humour sprinkled into the dynamic between the couples, the hipsters full of admiration for the music (vinyl), technology (turntables), fitness classes and achievements (Josh's first documentary) somehow left behind by the previous generation.

But Baumbach hits a creative wall heading into the second half of his film, and the narrative stalls. The story of competing documentarians is simply not that interesting, with the subject matter of both projects particularly dreary. Jamie is revealed to be potentially less than pure in his intentions and just as capable as any other young man to bend artistic rules in favour of his career. This sets Josh off on a Quixotic quest for vindication, an overreaction that serves to prove his stunted stature. All the pokey back and forth is sophomoric and empties the charm out of the film.

The four central performers enjoy themselves, Stiller playing mostly within himself, Watts emerging with the most credit, while Driver and Seyfried capture the friendly but detached cool of hipsterdom.

While We're Young is fun for a while, but grows old quickly.

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