Yes, I am willing to defend the infamous flop 'Ishtar'

The now obscure 1987 Warren Beatty-Dustin Hoffman adventure-comedy vehicle Ishtar, for those who have even heard of it, has become, in the minds of many, synonymous with legendary budget disasters.

The movie, both stars first after a critical and commercial triumph years earlier (Reds for Beatty and Tootsie for Hoffman), effectively brought down comedic icon Elaine May's once promising career as a director after its cost ballooned to an at the time unheard $50 million and it didn't even gross close to half that at the box office.

The film was largely critically reviled, although a few outlets loved it and some (like the New York Times' Vincent Camby) even put it just outside their top 10 best movies of the year rankings. And, as Beatty pointed out, almost every pan of the film led with a bitter rebuke of the movie's budget, suggesting that the project's hubris was even more offensive than its shortcomings.

Today, even a lot of the movie's haters have started to come around to it's charms. And audiences who've dared to give it a chance have come to see it as nothing like the cinematic atrocity its been regarded as for about 30 years. As May famously once joked: “If half the people who had made cracks about Ishtar had seen it. I would be a rich woman today.”

Not unlike Heaven's Gate, the sprawling 1980 western, which was also infamous for its cost overruns caused in part by its perfectionist director -- Ishtar is an imperfect but still fascinating movie -- that has a lot going for it that shouldn't be dismissed just because the behind-the-scenes story was a mess.

The biggest problem with Ishtar is also in a way it's biggest asset -- it's just a light comedy. In scope and content, it feels even less ambitious than Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd's most popular homage to Bob Hope/Bing Crosby 'road' comedies from two years earlier, Spies Like Us. There is nothing too big at stake here, just two aging dummies in over their heads. You don't see where the money went on screen, it should never have been a 'big' movie, and if you go into it expecting something blockbuster-y, you will be disappointed.

This is a film that has the same, low key hilarious rhythm of a lot of Christopher Guest films. The uproarious opening section features Beatty and Hoffman as a clueless, tone deaf duo of would be songwriters -- trying to sell their act and awful songs to no avail.

Through a set of convoluted circumstances they get embroiled in a CIA plot involving a country in the Middle East, arms traders, and a beautiful rebel who one of them absurdly mistakes for being a man, played by the luminous as always Isabella Adjani.

The movie was meant to be a gift from its stars to its eccentric director, who famously punched up scripts for both of their hit prior films, and who had a reputation for making interesting films that also could become mired in studio drama and prolonged delays.

There is literally no excusing the movies' costs. A movie this short of story and pyrotechnics needn't require that kind of money. Also, if the background stories are to be believed, it appears that May (and the cast's) over-the-top ego and/or obsessive attention to detail (depending on your point of view) clearly turned what should have been a light diversion of a movie into a bit of a nightmarish mess.

It also didn't have to be shot on location in north Africa, which certainly put more demands on the film financially and creatively.

Not all the humor in the movie holds up -- it's pretty culturally insensitive -- but then a lot of it does. Beatty and Hoffman are really funny together, so much so that even the sillier running gags (like Hoffman being the irresistible hunk and Beatty being a bumbler with women) work because the two stars are just so damn charming.

The movie also has some sly, subtle things to say about the vapid but sometimes sincere pursuit of fame, celebrity and heroism, not mention the frail male ego, something May has proven very adept at capturing in the past in her terrific 1972 film The Heartbreak Kid and it's great but little seen follow-up 1976's Mikey and Nicky.

I can easily see how watching two middle aged buffoons stumble their way through bad relationships, bad songs, and silly jokes about a blind camel might have rubbed a lot of critics and audiences the wrong way back in 1987, and maybe in 2018 too.

But for me, if you look past the production woes and costs, and just enjoy the movie for the trifle that it is, I had a lot of fun with it. Now, that it's come and gone from theaters, the stakes are also no longer there, and you can enjoy it purely for its whimsical nature and endearing earnestness.

I think, despite its bad reputation, it might just put a smile on your face.