Ishtar (1987)

As I journey through the bad movie world, I see all kinds of movies.  Many stem from my own resources.  They’re movies I’ve heard about, movies I have in my collection of DVDs and Blu-rays, or things on Netflix.  But there is another side to my bad movie watching.  I have people suggest movies to me.  They could suggest movies I’ve never heard of, movies I’ve seen but haven’t covered, or movies that I haven’t seen that left a blind spot on my movie watching.  This week is an example of that last subcategory.  It’s a movie that I’ve heard is very bad, yet haven’t watched.  Someone suggested it so I threw it into the schedule.  This week’s movie is Ishtar.

The 1987 film followed Lyle Rogers (Warren Beatty) and Chuck Clarke (Dustin Hoffman), two American singer-songwriters who travelled to Morocco for a gig.  They ended up entangled in a struggle between the Emir of Ishtar and a group of rebels working to overthrow him.  Jim Harrison (Charles Grodin) was a CIA agent using Chuck and Lyle’s lack of intelligence to disrupt the rebels and keep the Middle East from breaking out in war.

Like I’ve been prone to do recently, I want to break this movie down.  This movie was quite the experience.  There were many ideas presented in the movie that didn’t mesh well and left a stunningly bad product.  I don’t know how Ishtar ended up being made this way, but I can point to many of the aspects in the final film that were bad.  Maybe I’ll find my answer while I’m writing.  Who knows?

The History of Rogers and Clarke

The first fifteen or so minutes of Ishtar gave a history of Lyle Rogers and Chuck Clarke.  As the two characters failed at their act once more, they went to a bar to drown their sorrows.  We were then shown a flashback of how the characters met and what happened with their relationships and their careers.  It got really dark, having both characters lose their significant others because they were so focused on their music.  One of the characters even attempted suicide.

This style of humour didn’t really work.  It was about beating these characters up.  The characters got to where they needed to be for the real story, but it was just mean.  Where the rest of the movie became a dark farce, this was the world tearing the characters down.  The negativity was off-putting, and set the movie up for failure.  It got better later on, though.  It was only this opening portion that was offensively mean to the main characters.

There were decent jokes in there, though.  It’s impossible for a comedy to have absolutely zero good jokes.  If you’re looking for something funny, you’re bound to find at least one funny thing.  Dustin Hoffman showed off his physical comedy by dancing around on stage during one failed performance.  He is an underrated physical performer.  There was also the long line of people who came to talk Chuck off the ledge of his apartment.  The people who appeared from his past got increasingly more ridiculous to the point where you can’t help but laugh.  That kind of stuff worked, even if the movie was too mean for its own good.

The Introduction of the Main Plot

Rogers and Clarke travelled from New York City to Ishtar in order to arrive at a gig in Morocco.  The only reason for them to go to Ishtar before Morocco was to kickstart the main story.  Any other travelling musicians would have gone directly to their destination, instead of going to the next country over.

It was while at the airport that Chuck met Shirra, a woman trying to get to Marrakesh.  She needed his passport and luggage.  He reluctantly, at first, gave it up thinking that he would be able to quickly obtain a new passport.  The unrest in the Middle East held up that plan.  He sent Lyle on alone and tried to figure out a way to get himself a passport.  This led to Jim Harrison enlisting Chuck as a CIA mole.

Meanwhile, Lyle came into contact with Shirra once he arrived in Marrakesh.  He unknowingly became an accomplice to the rebel forces that were trying to overthrow the Emir of Ishtar.  When Chuck joined Lyle in Marrakesh the next night, it led to a series of farcical action scenes that would last the rest of the movie.  The two characters thought they were working for the opposing forces in this soon to be war, when really the two sides were simply using them as pawns.

The Desert

After the big action scene where spies from various nations were shooting at each other while Rogers and Clarke ran across rooftops, both sides of the war sent the characters into the desert.  They didn’t care about the characters anymore and wanted to get rid of them.  Sending them into the desert to die was their way of cutting any loose ends.

The CIA played on Chuck Clarke’s stupidity by telling him to walk through the desert until he reached The Oasis.  Any intelligent person would know that an oasis is pretty much a mirage and there’s no real chance that you’ll reach it.  Especially when you only have two canteens of water for two people.  How long is that supposed to last you?  Clarke fell for it, though, and decided that he needed to trek through the desert to stay safe.

As for the rebels, they gave Lyle Rogers a foolproof plan, which was tailor made for a fool like Lyle.  He was sent into the desert with beads to drop and told that the beads would glow in the dark.  At night, he would follow their path back into the town.  They did not glow in the dark, however.  The first question I would have about this plan is: Why not just walk a little distance and then rest?  Why keep moving?  The farther you walk, the farther you have to trek back.  There’s more chance of getting lost, regardless of glowing beads, the farther you head out of town.  I understand how that wouldn’t have tipped Lyle off, but it still smells fishy.

The Blind Camel

During Lyle’s espionage story, Shirra told him to go to the local market and ask for a blind camel.  He did exactly that.  It was supposed to be a coded message to set up a meeting with the rebels.  Instead, Lyle bought a blind camel that would travel with him and Clarke for the remainder of the movie.  While they were in town, they would walk around with the camel.  Chuck and Jim Harrison spoke while kneeling under the camel.  The camel even went into the desert.  This blind camel became a third lead of sorts on their adventure.

A good amount of comedy came from the blind camel being around.  Much of that comedy was mined from the camel being blind, but there were other jokes too.  One was that it stood on Jim Harrison’s foot.  That may not sound funny on paper.  It worked in the movie.  It was more of a visual gag than a written one.  The other joke, and the one that worked best, happened during the climactic shootout near the end of the movie.  Rogers and Clarke ended up with a large cache of guns and ammo.  When they tried to move it, the camel wouldn’t go with them.  They left the camel where it was and began dragging the weaponry away.  While dragging it, the gun battle happened.  At the end, the camera view widened to reveal the camel sitting about ten feet away from them.  They had only moved ten feet before fighting.  It wasn’t so much the camel that made the joke, but the small distance they had moved.  The camel was still a part of it.

The Finale

I’ve already given out many of the plot details of Ishtar, so I probably don’t have to say this, but there are spoilers ahead.  The whole reason behind the twisty-turny espionage plots was that a map was found that would cripple the Emir’s regime.  The CIA and Emir wanted the map to prevent an uprising, and the rebels wanted it to cause the uprising.  In the end, following the shootout in the desert, the map went to the rebels.

The CIA needed to cover up their mission to protect the Emir.  The shootout had blown their secrecy.  That caused them to strike a deal with Rogers and Clarke.  They would produce a record from the duo, recorded live at the Chez Casablanca.  The Moroccan venue was the first place that Rogers and Clarke had found success.  The CIA agreed to produce and promote the record.  They brought in a bunch of agents to fill the room with applause whenever a song ended.  Even Shirra showed up to the recording.  Rogers and Clarke dedicated a song to her, and she cried from how much she liked it.  The government people didn’t like the songs that much, though.

Ishtar was a strange movie.  I didn’t find an answer to how it got made the way it got made.  All I did was realize that I enjoyed it a little more than I thought.  There were positive things that I could pull out of the movie.  That doesn’t always happen, but I appreciate when it does.  I appreciate that I could find things to like, even though I didn’t like the movie all that much.  I hope that other people can do the same.

A lot of the time, people see movies as black or white.  They’re either good or bad.  They can’t be good with bad things.  They can’t be bad with good things.  The middle ground between good and bad seems to be disappearing among anyone who talks about anything.  Ishtar was a bad movie, but it had good things in it.  It is a movie that should be in the middle ground.  Or, it shouldn’t be in the ground at all.  Movies are not a scale.  Movies are a feeling.  You can’t just label one based on how good or bad it is.  It should be able to fit into different ratings.  A movie should be a movie and that’s all.  That’s why there are good bad movies and bad bad movies.  That’s why a bad movie can have one of your favourite movie moments.  It is possible to dislike a movie but find one specific thing great.  That’s the power of movies.  And that’s why Ishtar is special.  Hey, look.  I found an answer.

I found some notes, too:

• Ishtar was suggested by @darbmilne.
• Since there are no actor/director connections or movies that I mentioned in this post, I’m going to link to a few movies relevant to stuff that is either in theaters now or coming soon. 
• Here’s the post for Batman and Robin, since Suicide Squad comes out soon.
• Since Sharknado 4: The Fourth Awakens comes out tonight, here’s the Sharknado franchise post, as well as the posts for Two-Headed Shark Attack, and Three-Headed Shark Attack.
• Lights Out recently came out, so here’s a post for Alone in the Dark.
• Finally, with Nine Lives being released next week, here’s my post for A Talking Cat!?!
• Have you seen Ishtar?  What do you think about it? Is it a hot mess or an unpolished gem?  Is it bad with good, good with bad, or just straight good or bad?  Use the comments section to discuss the movie.
• Do you want to suggest a movie for me to watch in a later week of the Sunday “Bad” Movies?  You can suggest a movie by letting me know on Twitter or putting your suggestion in the comments.
• I am on snapchat and sometimes post stories of the bad movies I watch.  If you want to see those stories, you can add me.  Jurassicgriffin.
• Next week, the movie is going to be Double Team.  It’s the first time I will feature a movie that has Jean-Claude van Damme, so that’s a milestone.  It only took nearly 200 weeks for him to show up in the blog.  I saw this movie in the 90s, but I don’t think I’ve seen it since.  This is going to be interesting.  I’ll see you next week after this rewatch of a movie I barely remember.

DOA: Dead or Alive (2006)

My idea for this week’s post was to write about tournament fighting movies.  For the most part, the movie succeeds with the tournament aspect.  The fights are entertaining, if a little unrealistic.  But I already covered that topic in my post for the Mortal Kombat movies.  Go figure, I used the most popular of tournament fighting movies based on video games to discuss the topic of tournament fighting movies.  I may have even mentioned this week’s movie.  I can’t remember.

That is why this is going to turn into one of those standard “Here are the reasons the movie is what it is” posts.  The only other topic that jumps to mind is video game movies and I am not ready to cover that messy subject.  With the topic I was willing to write about already covered, I have to resort to a tried and tested post blueprint.

This week’s movie is DOA: Dead or Alive.  It was released in 2006 and followed the best fighters in their respective styles coming together on an island to see who the best was.  Kasumi (Devon Aoki) was a princess looking for her brother, who went missing after fighting in the previous year’s tournament.  Christie Allen (Holly Valance) was a thief who wanted to steal the prize money.  Tina Armstrong (Jaime Pressly) was a professional wrestler who wanted to show the world that she could really fight.  Together, they uncovered an evil plan masterminded by the tournament leader Donovan (Eric Roberts) and tried to put an end to it with Helena Douglas (Sarah Carter), the daughter of the original tournament leader.  Also along for the ride were Christie’s partner in crime Max (Matthew Marsden), Kasumi’s protector Ryu Hayabusa (Kane Kosugi), and Weatherby (Steve Howie), a tech employee who was in love with Helena.

If DOA: Dead or Alive wasn’t based on the game it was based on, it could be a solid to great movie.  If it had a more focused tone, it could be a solid to great movie.  There were a lot of things that could have made this movie better.  Instead, there is a unique badness that makes it stand out.  It’s not boring.  It’s pretty fun, actually.  But it is terrible in all the wrong ways.  I’m going to lay out some stuff that made DOA: Dead or Alive into the movie it became.  I’m going to get specific with things instead of talking about generalizations, since it will keep me from repeating myself as much as usual.

Bass Armstrong

Tina Armstrong was one of the main characters of DOA: Dead or Alive.  She was the wrestler portrayed by Jaime Pressly who wanted to prove that she could fight.  Part of her reasoning behind this desire was her father, Bass.  Played by Kevin Nash, Bass Armstrong was a world renowned professional wrestler who never took his fighting seriously.  He was presented as a comedic character.

Kevin Nash showed off his comedic stylings with the character.  This was most apparent in the single fight scene that he had, where Bass fought his daughter as they tried to knock each other into the water.  The first person in the water would lose.  You could tell that he wanted his daughter to win while also wanting to put on a good show.  It is Kevin Nash’s real professional wrestling experience that helped him sell the fight.  He knew how to play it to make the best of his small time on screen.  The performance showed he was a capable actor who could go on to do better work in better movies down the line.

Weatherby’s Love Scene

The title of this part of the movie might sound misleading.  I don’t mean sex scene when I say love scene.  Though the movie was super sexy because of the video game franchise that it was based on, there wasn’t a whole lot of actual sexing going on.  There were mistaken scenes of sexing on the part of Bass walking in on his daughter and misunderstanding her friendship with other competitors, but those weren’t sex scenes.  Neither was this.

Weatherby was in love with Helena.  She didn’t even know who he was.  At one point in the movie, he decided that it was time to make his move.  He was going to introduce himself and see where things went.  As he walked toward her, he imagined what their love would be like.  It was a quick moment that included the two of them running their hands along each other’s bodies while dancing.  The music playing in the background was that stereotypical romance music that I’m sure was made before The Sims but I know mostly from The Sims when characters fall in love.  Rose petals also blew across the screen during the imagined love.

This moment was possibly the best comedy in the movie, though very out of place.  Weatherby was the comic relief, but this imagined love scene didn’t fit with the sexy action of the rest of the movie.  It ended up being a goofy little bit that did no more than make me chuckle and think “Why couldn’t this movie have more of this?”

Volleyball

No film adaptation of the Dead or Alive video game franchise would be complete without the obligatory beach volleyball scene.  The sport helps sum up the themes of Dead or Alive.  There are sexy women in bikinis jumping around.  That’s exactly what you would expect of DOA: Dead or Alive.

The volleyball scene was also a nod to the spin-off series of video games called Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball.  The games are known more than anything for the physics that they use when the women move.  They intend for male players to get aroused by the women through curves, jiggles, and other physical things during the volleyball games.  The movie used gratuitous shots of the main characters playing volleyball to titillate the audience.  Both have similar intentions, but get to their destinations through the different means of their different mediums.

Eric Roberts

He’s Eric freakin’ Roberts.  How can I not bring him up?  The guy has a presence that overwhelms everything he does.  He could be in the smallest bit role in the crappiest movie (Chicks Dig Gay Guys) and still make an impression.  There’s something that comes out every time he’s on screen that makes things more entertaining.  You can’t help but enjoy the guy.

For the majority of DOA: Dead or Alive, Eric Roberts was doing the typical Eric Roberts thing.  He was showing up, being awesomely Eric Roberts, and then leaving the scene.  That would change in the final third of the movie when Donovan’s true intentions were revealed.  He used sunglasses to give himself super martial arts skills, and he became a kung-fu badass.  That’s right!  Eric Roberts was doing some martial arts fighting near the end of the movie.  Much of the fighting used wirework, but that doesn’t erase the fact that it was Eric Roberts (or his character) doing this stuff.  Just the fact that it was Eric Roberts makes it ten times more entertaining than it should be.

Sound Effects

I would feel bad if I went through this post without mentioning the sound effects.  We can breeze by the love music that I mentioned during my description of the Weatherby scene.  There are other sound effects to be discussed.

The ones that come to mind were during the fight between Tina Armstrong and Zack (Brian White).  Most of the kicks and punches were simple thuds, but a few moments added flair to what was happening.  There were screeches as Tina spun through the air.  There was a gun cocking and firing when Tina did a forward flip and kicked Zack on the top of the head with the heel of her foot.  But the biggest sound effect moment was when she punched Zack in the jaw and the sound of tweeting birds echoed through the music.  The sound effects were little bursts of comedy in what wasn’t a comedic scene.

There was also a Wilhelm scream in the movie.  That’s in every movie, though, so that shouldn’t count.

The Camaraderie

The final thing to highlight is how friendly the characters were with one another throughout DOA: Dead or Alive.  Most tournament fighting movies involve serious injury or death to the losers.  Look at the most popular of the bunch, Mortal Kombat.  Right in the title, it tells you that characters are going to die as a result of the fighting.  DOA: Dead or Alive makes you think that some of the characters are going to die in the movie.  Sure, some do.  But the tournament fights simply end with someone giving up or being knocked out.

This can all come down to the friendship between the characters.  Of course, there was no bad blood between Bass and his daughter Tina.  They loved each other and weren’t going to try to harm one another.  Tina’s other big fight, with Zack, wasn’t brutal either.  They hit each other hard but there was a friendly antagonism between the characters.  They didn’t want to hurt each other.  They were playing around in their fighting and bickering throughout the movie.

The only time that the main three characters were truly against each other was when they arrived at the island.  Kasumi, Christie, and Tina soon realised that they would have to work together to make it to the compound on time.  Their bond of working together never broke in the movie.  Though they wanted to win (or in Christie’s case take) the prize, they weren’t out to harm each other.  The tournament fighting was competitive rather than life or death.  It set DOA: Dead or Alive apart from other tournament fighting movies.

That’s all I’ve got for DOA: Dead or Alive.  It’s not a great movie, but it is an interesting counterpart to other movies of its type.  It tried to be three different tones and none of them fit together.  I still enjoy the movie.  It’s entertaining in some strange way that makes me want to rewatch it.  The movie is worth a watch if only to see the insanity.  If you haven’t seen it, you should.  Even if you don’t like it, there’s a lot of fascinating stuff.  You should be able to appreciate that.

You should also be able to appreciate these notes:

• I mentioned Mortal Kombat and Chicks Dig Gay Guys in the post.
• Robin Shou was in DOA: Dead or Alive.  He was also in Death Race, Death Race 2, Death Race: Inferno, Mortal Kombat, and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
• DOA: Dead or Alive featured Eric Roberts.  He has been in the Sunday “Bad” Movies before.  He was in A Talking Cat!?!, Chicks Dig Gay Guys, and The Human Centipede 3.
• Jaime Pressly was also in DOA: Dead or Alive.  She has been in The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, Torque, and Cruel World.
• Did you recognize Steve Howie as Weatherby?  He was the star of Stan Helsing, which I covered a long time ago.
• Matthew Marsden showed up in DOA: Dead or Alive.  He could previously be seen in Anacondas: Hunt for the Blood Orchid.
• I wrote a little bit about Kevin Nash.  He was already in the Sunday “Bad” Movies with Monster Brawl.
• Finally, we have Devon Aoki.  She was in D.E.B.S. as well as DOA: Dead or Alive.
• Have you seen DOA: Dead or Alive?  What do you think about the movie?  Is it good?  Is it bad?  Is it interesting?  Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
• Do you have any movies that you think I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies?  Let me know about them.  Tell me in the comments or on Twitter.  Any suggestions help with scheduling down the line.
• If you want to see clips of some of the bad movies I watch, consider adding me on snapchat.  Find the username jurassicgriffin and add me.  My stories sometimes get filled with bad movie clips.
• Next week’s movie is going to be Ishtar.  I’ve never seen it, but I always hear about how bad it is.  I’m looking forward to knocking this one out of my bad movie blind spots.  Be back here next week for another post about another bad movie.