The Beautician and the Beast

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article may contain inappropriate or misinterpreted citations that do not verify the text.
Please help improve this article by checking for inaccuracies. (March 2008) (help, talk, get involved!)
All or part of this article may be confusing or unclear.
Please help clarify the article. Suggestions may be on the talk page. (January 2008)
The Beautician and the Beast

The one-sheet promotional poster for film.
Directed by Ken Kwapis
Produced by Todd Graff
Hawk Koch
Roger Birnbaum
Fran Drescher
Peter Marc Jacobson
Written by Todd Graff
Starring Fran Drescher
Timothy Dalton
Music by Cliff Eidelman
Cinematography Peter Lyons Collister
Editing by Jon Poll
Release date(s) 1997
Running time 105 min.
Country U.S.
Language English
IMDb profile

The Beautician and the Beast is a 1997 family comedy film directed by Ken Kwapis and starring Fran Drescher and Timothy Dalton as the title characters. The story follows the misadventures of a New York beautician who is (mistakenly) hired as the school teacher for the children of the president of a small Eastern European country. The story is similar to theThe King and I, The Sound of Music and Evita, with elements also reminiscent of the sitcom The Nanny, for which Drescher is most famous.

Contents

[edit] Plot

An American beautician (Fran Drescher) teaches students to groom hair, but is put out of business when one of her students tries to hide a cigarette and ignites some hair spray, eventually leading to the school burning down. While searching for work, she is mistaken for an academic teacher by a diplomatic representative of small Eastern European country called Slovetzia. She becomes the tutor of a Stalinesque dictator's children. The authoritarian president Boris Pochenko (Timothy Dalton) is very fierce and generally is thought to be a "beast". As the beautician becomes a friend to the children, she also helps mold the president's image to appear more friendly, and an unlikely love story emerges.

[edit] Production

According to the DVD commentary, the original title for the film was "The King and Oy", a direct reference to the musical The King and I, but it had to be changed because they could not obtain the rights to use it. 

The film was shot in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles and Prague.[citation needed]

[edit] Slovetzia

Slovetzia, the fictional country depicted in this film is a tiny state (possibly qualifying as a European microstate) between Romania, Ukraine and Slovakia; situated roughly in Trans-Carpathia, a real region of Ukraine. The republic is a post-communist Eastern European dictatorship. The national flag of Slovetzia is a red over (medium) blue bicolor with a black boar's head with white tusks. The ratio of the flag is approximately 2:3. The presidential flag of Slovetzia seen on the president's car is square.

[edit] Slovetzian language

Slovetzian, a fictional Slavic language is spoken by the children of the president and other characters in the film. The language is written in Latin letters as seen in the film.

Though not a linguisitic expert himself and a monolingual English speaker, director Ken Kwapis wanted to create a fictional Slavic language for the fictional Slavic country of Slovetzia. He hired dialect coach Francie Brown who worked with the director and the actors to create a "Slovetzian language and accent".

Ken Kwapis picked sounds he liked from Czech and Russian, with the former predominating, as the film was mostly filmed in the Czech Republic, in and around the capital Prague). The language also included elements of Romanian (a Romance language and not a Slavic language) and Hungarian (a Uralic language and not an Indo-European language).

[edit] Response

This movie was generally panned by the critics, including a scathing review by Susan Wloszczyna of USA Today. The irony is not lost, as the character of Boris Pochenko lambasts the negative coverage of his country by the American press (in particular USA Today) in the film. 

"Listening to Fran Drescher's nasal squawk for an entire movie is the price you'll pay to see The Beautician and the Beast. Imagine having your ear canal scoured with Brillo. Only more abrasive."  
-- Susan Wloszczyna

[edit] References

 This article does not cite any references or sources. (February 2008)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

[edit] External links

[edit] See also

Languages