THE BEAUTICIAN AND THE BEAST: Blu-ray (Paramount/High School Sweethearts, 1997) Paramount Home Video

Barely grossing $11 million against its $16 budget, director, Ken Kwapis’ The Beautician and the Beast (1997) superficially taps into French novelist, Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s classic fairytale, but owes considerably more to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I (1951 on stage, 1956 as a movie) with other movie-land homages paid along the way. The picture’s star, Fran Drescher, then riding high on her fame in TV’s The Nanny (1993-99), hoped this movie would propel her stardom to even greater heights. Alas, even when not considering the picture retrospectively, the similarities between it and The Nanny are pretty damn hard to miss. Her character on that show was a door-to-door cosmetics salesgirl who came into the reluctant employ of a rich, handsome widower with three precocious kids (okay, in this movie there are four). Sound familiar? Regrettably, Todd Graff’s screenplay offers precious little else that we have not already seen done better elsewhere. So, what we are left with is Drescher as Joy Miller who, on this outing, is set to tame oligarch, Boris Pochenko, the iron-fisted, and occasionally moronic President of Slovetzia with her Brooklyn ‘brass tax’/no nonsense attitude. Pochenko is a lion-hearted brute, barking orders at his staff and serfs while remaining stern and aloof towards his young family; eldest daughter, Katrina (a luminous Lisa Jakub), eldest son, Karl (Adam LaVorgna), hefty Heather DeLoach (Masha), and non-verbal Yuri (played by twins, Kyle and Tyler Wilkerson).

The Beautician and the Beast ought to have been a delightful send-up to all of its aforementioned influences and inspirations, except that it sticks much too close to the playbook of all concerned and never really tests the boundaries beyond familiar and very safe storytelling precepts of yore. Drescher, who also serves as an executive producer, pitched this one to Paramount via her own production company, High School Sweethearts, and was instrumental in assigning Graff, whom she believed wrote ‘in her voice’ and style. More of a ‘vanity’ than ‘passion’ project, The Beautician and the Beast fell to the whims of its star/producer, with an almost daily barrage of rewrites arriving on the set, always in service of Drescher’s own character development. It really is all her doing and her show. So, the picture’s box office thud rests squarely on her shoulders. Drescher has since claimed her decision to remain pretty much in the vein of the character she had created for The Nanny was ‘strategic’ so the audience did not ‘have to work too hard to accept her as another character.’ For his efforts, Graff hoped to ever-so-slightly re-craft Drescher’s personality, moving away from the honking ‘loudness’ into a more believably romantic type of comedy to reveal Drescher’s vulnerability.

I will say this. Despite the picture’s transparent copycatting and its narrative deficits, Drescher’s performance is the most engaging aspect of the production. She truly is fun to watch, and, in spots, shows at least the promise of becoming absolutely delightful. Her impediment is her co-star, Timothy Dalton, who plays Boris with a streak of cast-iron tyranny that, in just a few scenes, unbelievably transfers to rank and giddy bumbling. Comedy is decidedly not Dalton’s forte. Although he would later reflect on the movie as a positive working experience, sharing nothing but praise for Drescher’s comedic timing, despite her protective coaxing of his own, Dalton shares not a wit of Drescher’s finesse for farce. And then, there is continuity to consider. The Beautician and the Beast is set in the highly fictionalized Slovetzia, a pseudo-Communist/Eastern bloc Euro-trash principality – mostly agricultural - where its selfless serfs sing a fractured rendition of Pierre De Geyter’s Internationale as they either work the land or toil in one of the non-descript drab and dreadful sweatshops. In 1997, Hollywood could still marginally get away with cobbling together its fantasy impressions of such a botched and bizarre Euro-facsimile, using Beverly Hill’s Greystone Mansion for the interiors while pillaging Prague’s Sychrov Castle in the Czech Republic for ‘atmosphere’. Kwapis actually recruited a dialect coach, Francie Brown to create the Slovetzian accent – a brutally fractured blend of Czech, Russian, and Hungarian.

The best that can be said about The Beautician and the Beast is that, at 109 minutes, it does not outstay its welcome. Cinematographer, Peter Lyons Collister always gives us something fairly attractive to consider visually, while Cliff Eidelman’s underscore tugs at the appropriate heartstrings, and, intermittently adds ballast as well as grandeur to the more dramatically staged sequences. The best of these is a courtyard grand ball, orchestrated in true Anna Leonowens’ fashion by Joy, and, where Rusty Smith’s production design, Steve Cooper’s art direction, Sara Andrews’ set decoration and Barbara Tfank’s sumptuous costuming really get to shine. If nothing else, this is a handsomely mounted film, with some discretion to draw on its culture clash between Western democracy and Eastern bloc socialism. Drescher’s laissez-faire yenta breezes into the President’s dreary life and castle, transforming both with her Mary Poppins’ approach to life, love and liberation. That she succeeds at tearing down centuries-old prejudices and platitudes built upon the dictatorial control of a nation under the proverbial ‘thumb’ of on man is, of course, total nonsense a la Hollywood’s pie-eyed wish fulfillment – Boris’ iron curtain dissolved in true Samson-esque fashion, simply by lopping off his autocratic moustache, with a little mousse to soften his mane-like military brush cut.

The Beautician and the Beast begins with a needless animated sequence – Drescher cast as the Snow White knock-off awakened by love’s true kiss, only to turn down the blonde bo-hunk of a prince who offers her everything she could possibly desire. (Aside: I’ve read references to this sequence comparing it to Sleeping Beauty. Wrong. Sleeping Beauty was kissed in a castle turret. Snow White, like this knock-off, assaulted by young love’s kiss in a forest, complete with furry bunnies, rumored, at least by Drescher’s newly awakened heroine, to have left their droppings behind). Auditioning as a beautician for the model (Tonya Watts) who weekly announces the winning lottery numbers on TV, but failing to land a more permanent gig as her hairdresser, Joy Miller returns to her family home feeling defeated yet again. Her mother, Judy (Phyllis Newman) is eager to have Joy settle down. After all, she is not getting any younger. Joy’s father, Jerry (Michael Lerner) is more empathetic to his daughter chasing after her dreams. Joy teaches at a beauty school in downtown New York. Alas, during a tutorial, one of her students, Hector (Daniel Escobar) accidently sets fire to the wig he is styling with a drag on his cigarette. The highly flammable hairspray ignites and quickly spreads to other parts of the classroom. While her students flee in terror, Joy manages to save all of the helpless animals locked in cages at the back of the room. For her daring, she is featured on the front pages of the New York Post, garnering the attention of diplomat, Ira Grushinsky (Ian McNeice) who has been sent to Manhattan to bring back an ‘educator’ for Sloventzia’s Presidential offspring.

Unaware, Joy knows nothing beyond teaching beauty school, Ira whisks his new find back to this Eastern bloc principality only to discover the truth. Knowing his fumble will likely lead to his ruin, Ira and Joy conspire to keep her true educational skills a secret from President Boris Pochenko. Failing to arrive to their first official meeting proves a very poor start indeed. But Joy easily ingratiates herself to the President’s four children – particularly eldest daughter, Katrina, whom she learns is passionately in love with revolutionary, Alek (Timothy Dowling), and eldest son, Karl, whom Joy must thwart in his sexual curiosity to become ‘a man’ under her tutelage. With Joy’s guidance, all of the Pochenko’s children begin to blossom. In a total rip-off from The Sound of Music (1965), Joy even manages to fashion a designer dress for Masha from her Ralph Lauren bedding. Endeavoring to see something of her adopted country, Joy prepares for a night on the town. Katrina smuggles herself along for the ride, and takes Joy to an underground nightclub where, in a secret backroom, Alek is demonstratively rallying his cohorts into a rebellious frenzy. However, before any of this can get entirely out of hand, the President’s Prime Minister, Leonid Kleist (Patrick Malahide) and a small contingent of the President’s guard arrive on the scene, seizing Joy, Katrina and Alek – the latter, imprisoned in the palace dungeon to await his fate as a traitor to the nation.

Katrina’s pleas of love for Alek to her father fall on deaf ears. But Boris has begun to recognize the power Joy is exuding on his family. Furthermore, he knows she is not a ‘teacher’, but cannot resist beginning to fall under her spell. Thus, when Joy suggests Boris forgo his usual spate of NATO summits to, instead, spend more time with his children, and also, host a lavishly appointed ball where all of the important representatives from neighboring nations will be in attendance, Boris appoints Joy in charge of all arrangements. He also takes her to his favorite spot in the forest where, as a boy, he slew a calf for dinner. In a hilarious parallel scene, Joy is quite unable to kill a chicken for the ball, instead to make a pet of it that sleeps in her bedroom and gets carried around in her handbag like an accessory. Joy encourages Boris to go out and engage his people. She introduces him to his servants by their Christian names, and later, observes as her reinforcement allows Boris to enter one of the local factories to meet the union demands of their workforce.  

Boris and Joy cement their romantic intentions just prior to the ball. Boris has inferred he will liberate Alek from the dungeon at the end of the night’s festivities, as a sign he respects the wishes of his people in totem and, possibly, will soften into accepting Katrina’s love for this impassioned rebel. Alas, as the ball draws to a close, no such announcement is forthcoming, leaving both Katrina and Joy utterly disillusioned. In reply, Joy declares Boris a beast, a moment directly ripped off from The King and I, when Anna Leonowens admonished King Mongkut as ‘a barbarian’. Afterward, Joy decides there is no reason to remain in Slovetzia. She packs her bags and returns, sadder but wiser, to her parents’ home in the Bronx. Meanwhile, Boris learns from Ira that Kleist has been forging his signature on official edicts and documents that run counterintuitive to his own newfound ambitions to make Slovetzia a more progressive nation. Boris has Kleist arrested. Back in the Bronx, Jerry and Judy throw a surprise birthday party for Joy, bringing together every living relative and old flame. Joy is deeply depressed until a knock at the door reveals Boris has made the journey to profess his undying love for her. The couple embrace on the pavement just beyond Joy’s home with the understanding she will return to Slovetzia as its new ‘first lady’.

The Beautician and the Beast is a pretty pulpy affair. It’s ‘sweetness’ moves the predictable story along without any real moments of lag. But its banality is lethal to our appreciation for a good revisionist take on the classic ‘prince meets scullery girl’ fairytale.  And, in an age where such alliances are no longer fanciful but common place, the one-time magical fantasy alure in the exercise wholly evaporates. Fran Drescher carries the show and has some good one-liners to sell her wares. Her built-in Brooklyn-based nasally charisma is enough to manage the character of Joy with a modicum of pleasure we can hang onto when all else fails. As the Georg Von Trapp of the piece, Timothy Dalton offers little beyond the bristle and brew to make Boris Pochenko anything more or better than a cartoonish buffoon. The rest of the cast get limited playtime. The best of this supporting lot is Lisa Jakub, as the President’s elegantly precocious daughter. Jakub really ought to have had a bigger and better career ahead of her than the one eventually to materialize, and inexplicably cut short in 2000. Skillful assembly of the various elements that went into the movie do not necessarily translate into a good movie. As such, The Beautician and the Beast devolves into a middling knock-off of movie-land culture, reassembled around Fran Drescher’s star persona from The Nanny. The rest of the cast are left to dangle and dance around her until the extremely foreseeable last act finale.  

In a tremendously bare-bones effort from Paramount, The Beautician and the Beast arrives on Blu-ray in a transfer that leaves a little something to be desired. Not sure what went wrong here, but the image appears softer than anticipated. I have no doubt this is a ‘new scan’ as imperfections that were dully noted on the now defunct DVD from 2001 have been eradicated. The image here is free of age-related debris and artifacts. Also, the edge effects that were fairly obvious throughout the DVD transfer have been removed. So, Paramount has done work on this title. Still, the color palette just seems muted. Drescher’s pink mid-riff exposing pant suit, and lime green form-fitted slacks never pop as they should. Even greens in foliage look somewhat dull. Flesh tones are anemic. Drescher’s peaches n’ cream skin appears as though a touch of rigor mortis is about to set in. Fine detail is generally wanting. Film grain also appears to have been ‘tinkered’ with, for a more homogenized quality that does not reflect its presence naturally. Again, this isn’t an awful looking disc. Conversely, however, it singularly fails to impress. The 2.0 DTS audio is another bungle. Listening to this disc at normal decibel levels results in dialogue that is frequently inaudible. But beware, boosting the volume will result in overly loud music cues to make your speakers crack. We get a commentary track, ported over from the defunct DVD release, but no other extras. Not even a theatrical trailer. It’s pretty sad when Blu-ray.com can post a trailer but Paramount cannot be bothered to include one on their actual disc! Like the movie itself, this Blu-ray is hardly a stellar effort. Those looking to upgrade their DVD’s to hi-def will likely be pleased as this disc does advance – marginally – in all the areas one might expect. But owing these subtle improvements, the final result is still well below par for Blu-ray’s mastering capabilities. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

2.5

EXTRAS

1