Beautician and the Beast (1997)
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17% of critics liked it
(18 reviews) -
42% of users liked it
(28,559 ratings)
Joy Miller (Fran Drescher) is a beautician who teaches an evening course in hairstyling at a Brooklyn community college. When a cigarette dropped on a wig leads to a fire, Joy saves the lab animals kept in the building and achieves 15 minutes of local notoriety. Grushinsky (Ian McNeice), a… More Joy Miller (Fran Drescher) is a beautician who teaches an evening course in hairstyling at a Brooklyn community college. When a cigarette dropped on a wig leads to a fire, Joy saves the lab animals kept in the building and achieves 15 minutes of local notoriety. Grushinsky (Ian McNeice), a representative of the leader of the small Eastern European nation of Slovetzia, is visiting the United States while looking for a tutor for the leader's three children. Thinking Joy teaches science (apparently the Slovetzian government doesn't check the resumes of their teaching staff too closely), Grushinsky offers Joy the job, believing that it would be good PR to have a well-known American educator on hand. Joy takes the job and must now deal with Boris Pochenko (Timothy Dalton), the grim and humorless tyrant who rules Slovetzia. Joy's low-brow fashion sense and broad nasal twang of a voice don't sit well with Boris at first, but the kids love her; in time, she teaches Boris to lighten up and enjoy himself, and romance begins to bloom between the unlikely couple. While Fran Drescher had a number of film roles before her TV series The Nanny, this was her first starring role following the show's success. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Directed By
- Ken Kwapis
- Written By
- Todd Graff
- Genres
- Comedy, Romance
PG,
- In Theaters
- Feb 7, 1997 Wide
- Studio
- Paramount Home Video
Critic Reviews
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Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Manages to be sweet and likable, largely because Kwapis directs the actors well and treats the sub-Lubitsch material as if he actually believed in it.
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Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com
Cheesy, multi-accented culture-clash comedy that's seldom funny
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Michael Dequina, TheMovieReport.com
As hokey and banal as a sitcom, with predictable culture-clash gags and fairly flat one-liners.
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Bruce Bennett, Spectrum (St. George, Utah)
A charming surprise
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Scott Weinberg, eFilmCritic.com
Standard feature-length sitcom material. For Drescher fans only.
See more critic ratings and reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)
Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)
Cast
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Fran Drescher
as Joy Miller
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Timothy Dalton
as Boris Pochenko
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Ian McNeice
as Grushinsky
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Patrick Malahide
as Kleist
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Lisa Jakub
as Katrina
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Michael Lerner
as Jerry Miller
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Phyllis Newman
as Judy Miller
- Adam LaVorgna
- Heather DeLoach
- Tamara Mello
- Vincent Schiavelli
- Kyle Wilkerson
- Tyler Wilkerson
