jakegest

I dreaded this movie like the plague. When it first came out I refused to see it in theaters and managed to convince groups of friends to rent something else so I could avoid watching it. I suppose I categorized this film with the Wes Anderson movie Rushmore which I hated. I was finally convinced to watch this with a friend who couldn't stop raving about it. I really have to admit this was possibly the biggest turn around I have experienced in my lifetime. I found this film to be brilliant. The acting was wonderful, the storyline and screen writing was not only well done but truthful. Finally I was watching a film about high school that was funny not because of endless jokes about sex and drinking, but simply because it displayed something believable that I could relate to and yet find hilarious. Jon Heder was extraordinary and Tina Majorino's performance was also spectacular.

I saw this movie having no expectations and really no idea of what to expect and was still highly disappointed by the end. The movie starts off strait forward enough and soon it is conveyed to the viewer that the intent of this movie is to shock people and make them think outside the box. The film kept reaching to what would have to be an enormous climax as problems began toppling over one another as the main characters life slowly begins to crumple at the waysides. In the end I got the feeling that nothing was really resolved but instead the film quickly ends itself in nearly six or seven unpredictable plot twists, many of them occurring in the credits rather than the actual movie. It was as though the writers intended to set out a groundbreaking movie and suddenly at the last moment threw in some random twists in hopes of distracting the audience from the sheer lack of a continuous plot line. Really the only redeemable part of this movie was performance of Steve Zahn which was quite good.

I am aware of much of the criticism this movie received. Basically that it was awful and not worth seeing. To all those who have said such words I just have to ask, what movie were you watching? In my opinion Ishtar was a wonderful movie. It's about two grown men, whose only dream is to become great musicians but are so horrible that no one will have them but the tourist industry in Morocco. All the songs that these two, Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, sing are written by Elaine May and I found them to be simply hysterical. Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman make a great team, with humor vaguely reminiscent of Woody Allen. This is one of the only movies in which you get to see Warren act in such a way. I would defiantly recommend it to anyone despite its poor reviews.