The Beautician and the Beast (1997)

Certain movies could only exist within a capsule of that exact time. They were perfectly timed to come out when they did, the way they did. It’s as though some higher power led everything to that specific moment. Whether the movie was a success or a complete and utter failure, it had to happen. Everything was set up perfectly. There was no other way that things could turn out. The movie was meant to be.

That was the case with The Beautician and the Beast. The perfect confluence of the elements of the time came together to make a movie that could only be released in the mid-to-late 90s. It had a television star playing a character geared specifically to what she was known for playing. It had clear references to movies of that specific time. It even had a post-Cold War setting which would frame the story in a somewhat interesting light. These were all elements that could only be a part of a movie from the late 1990s.

The Beautician and the Beast took Joy Miller (Fran Drescher) out of her normal life and placed her in a far away land. She was a beauty instructor in New York who saved a bunch of animals from a burning school science lab. This impressed Ira Grushinsky (Ian McNeice), a Slovetzian diplomat. He hired her to be the live-in teacher of four children: Katrina (Lisa Jakub), Karl (Adam LaVorgna), Masha (Heather DeLoach), and Yuri (Kyle and Tyler Wilkerson). She ended up falling in love with their father, President Boris Pochenko (Timothy Dalton), while also helping him see the errors of his dictatorial ways.

Fran Drescher was a driving force behind The Beautician and the Beast becoming the movie it was. Before her true influence can be explained, however, a major trend from the 90s must be brought up. Throughout the 1990s, studios kept tossing sitcom stars into film careers. They were successful in one arena. Why wouldn’t they be in the other? Sometimes it worked and other times it didn’t.

Tim Allen made one of the biggest transitions when he first made the leap into film. He managed to have one week in 1994 where he starred in the number one television show, Home Improvement, and the number one movie, The Santa Clause, while also having his book, Don’t Stand Too Close to a Naked Man, as the number one bestseller. Jennifer Aniston was another success to come out of 1990s comedy, parlaying her time on Friends into a successful film career that is still going strong today. Okay, maybe not today. The pandemic might have put that on hold. But it was going strong until the pandemic. Christina Applegate’s show Married with Children started in 1987, but it ran well into the 1990s with 11 seasons on the air. Then she had a pretty good movie career with comedies like Anchorman and Bad Moms along the way.

Other stars didn’t shine so bright on the big screen. Courteney Cox went from Friends to the Scream movies. Outside of that, her film career didn’t go too far. Her television career kept chugging along though. Same with Matthew Perry. He had some big movies during his time on Friends. After that, he kind of just stuck with television, being in series after series after series. And then there was Matt LeBlanc, whose film career kind of started and ended with Lost in Space. Outside of Friends, there was Saved by the Bell. When the show ended, Elizabeth Berkley wanted to shake her teen persona off and be taken seriously as an actor. She made Showgirls and… The reputation of that movie stunted any film stardom potential she had. French Stewart couldn’t become a huge box office draw after 3^rd Rock from the Sun ended, though his co-star Joseph Gordon Levitt found a lot of success.

All in all, there were many actors being pushed from their sitcom roles onto the big screen. If they could be part of the success of a network television show, they might be able to bring in some money at the box office. That’s what studios thought. That’s why Fran Drescher was brought in for The Beautician and the Beast. Her show, The Nanny, was a huge success. It ran from 1993 until 1999, and the movie was right smack dab in the middle of it, at the height of its popularity. She captivated television audiences. She could captivate movie audiences, too. It was the 1990s comedy mentality.

Now that the overall trend of the 1990s has been discussed, Fran Drescher, herself, can come back into play. She was an actor with a very singular persona. Her character in The Beautician and the Beast had some similarities to her character in The Nanny. Joy began the film as a beautician, much like the main character of The Nanny was a cosmetics saleswoman. Both characters began looking after the children of a wealthy man. In The Beautician and the Beast, she became their teacher. In The Nanny, she became their nanny. Both characters fell in love with the wealthy man, a dictatorial President in The Beautician and the Beast, and a Broadway producer in The Nanny.

It felt as though the main character from The Nanny had been grafted onto The Beautician and the Beast to play into the popularity that Fran Drescher had. People liked her because of her television character. Having a film character who was essentially the same would be an easy way to replicate that television success.

One other Fran Drescher element had to be brought to the film, as well. When she got the role in The Beautician and the Beast, Fran Drescher got vocal lessons to reduce her accent. The producers weren’t fans of that. If they were going to cast Fran Drescher as the lead in their film, they wanted Fran Drescher. Part of what made her stand out from other actors and comedians of the time was her nasally, New York accented voice. It was one of her trademarks. Getting rid of that accent would remove one of her trademarks and one of the reasons people might want to see the movie. In the end, she spoke much closer to how she was known to speak than the non-accented, non-nasally voice she was going to go with.

The final influence that Fran Drescher had over the film was in the story, and that brought about another trend of the 1990s. The Disney Renaissance was well underway. It began with The Little Mermaid in 1989 and lasted for a decade. It was a new age of popularity for the Disney films after they fell out of favour in the 1970s and 1980s. The third movie in the Disney Renaissance was one of the biggest inspirations that the movie took when Fran Drescher signed on. The Beautician and the Beast. Beauty and the Beast. Get it?

The setting had to change from Beauty and the Beast, however. It needed to be modernized to fit the character type that Fran Drescher played during the 1990s. There couldn’t be a New York beautician in classical France without the use of time travel elements that they didn’t want or even consider for the film. Instead, it was set in the modern day in the fictional country of Slovetzia. It was an Eastern European country in the post-Cold War era.

Post-Cold War era politics weren’t the primary focus of The Beautician and the Beast, but they did come into play through the burgeoning relationship between Joy and Boris. The politics also came into play through the relationship that Katrina had with a revolutionary. The movie was about the romantic aspects; however, the romance couldn’t be realized without western democracy slowly finding its way into the dictatorship of Slovetzia. Joy’s American ways rubbed off on Boris Pochenko. He learned to meet his people. He didn’t have to be a strong fist that would strike down if they stepped out of line. He could find a connection with them and let everyone be equals, or closer to equals. He was still in charge of the country. But he was going to see the people as people rather than his followers.

The Beautician and the Beast could only be made around the time it was made. It pulled in influences from much of what was going on in Hollywood and the world. The producers cast someone from a popular television sitcom. The movie was fitted to her strengths and many of the elements that helped make her popular. The story was inspired by the Disney Renaissance that was going strong at the time. And a post-Cold War setting was utilized, albeit in a fictionalized European nation. Did it succeed by pulling in all the elements? Not necessarily. It flopped critically and at the box office, and became a punchline in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. But it happened.

Some movies encapsulate the time in which they were made. They strike upon things going on in the world. They tie in many of the trends lighting the box office and the Nielsen ratings boxes on fire. The producers throw everything into the film to try and strike while the iron is still hot. Sometimes it will work like gangbusters. Other times, it will die upon release. Either way, it’s always fun to look back at a movie and see how of its time it was. That was the case here.

Now let’s get some notes out of the way:

• Showgirls (week 170) was brought up in this post.
• Marianne Muellerleile made her triumphant return to Sunday “Bad” Movies this week in her fourth appearance. She was previously in Jingle All the Way (week 160), Norbit (week 227), and The Hottie and the Nottie (week 395).
• The great Timothy Dalton now has three Sunday “Bad” Movies under his belt. He was in Flash Gordon (week 81), Sextette (week 141), and now The Beautician and the Beast.
• Another three-timer was Marshal Silverman, who was in Wild Wild West (week 296), Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (week 400), and The Beautician and the Beast.
• Fran Drescher was in both The Beautician and the Beast and Santa’s Slay (week 263).
• This was the second time Michael Lerner appeared in a Sunday “Bad” Movie. The first was Godzilla (week 282).
• Heather DeLoach returned from Balls of Fury (week 349) to appear in The Beautician and the Beast.
• The Beautician and the Beast saw the return of Celeste Russi to Sunday “Bad” Movies, after first appearing in Mannequin: On the Move (week 378).
• Finally, Timothy Dowling showed up in Pixels (week 407) and The Beautician and the Beast.
• Have you seen The Beautician and the Beast? What did you think of it? What are some other movies that could only be made when they were made? Give me your thoughts and opinions in the comments or on Twitter.
• If there are any movies that you think would fit in with the movies I cover for Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know about them. You can find me on Twitter or in the comments and drop a line to what I should be checking out for future posts.
• Sunday “Bad” Movies is on Instagram. There are trailers, scenes, pictures, posters, and other fun stuff going up there on a regular basis.
• Now for a quick preview of next week. It’s going to be a franchise week. I haven’t done an action franchise in a bit, so I thought I’d toss one of those in here. This franchise began in 1993 and has been going ever since. Well, maybe not ever since. It took nine years just to get a second film. I’m only going to check out the first three, since the franchise is currently eight movies long. Eight would be a little too much to handle in one post, so three it is. I’ll be watching and writing about Sniper, Sniper 2, and Sniper 3. I hope you join me next week when another post goes up.