Wolff rating: NOT BAD
Plot summary: New York beautician gets hired as a teacher for the children of a dictator of a newly-liberated Eastern Block country.
Biased, pithy comments: Fran Drescher learned something during all those years on ``The Nanny.'' She learned comic timing, and has it down pat. She comes off well-equipped for the role, though it is just a riff from both her public persona and her ``Nanny'' character---the soft-hearted hard-talking New York Jew. Dalton, fresh from being James Bond, plays the Stalinesque dictator, milking a few laughs out of an iron-hard man learning to smile. However, there isn't a creative bone in the entire thing, and as we hear about the liberalizing of a dictatorship, one can't help but think of the terrible economic conditions in former Warsaw Pact countries that have resulted from the collapse of Communism. See, I just don't find Ceausescu funny, deep in my heart, but if you take the film as a light-hearted Marx-brothers fantasy with a made-up country doing goofy things, it's surprisingly fun. I don't recommend it, but it's definitely smoothly acted and cleanly built (but from used parts).
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Fran Drescher, Timothy Dalton, Ian McNeice, Patrick Malahide, Lisa Jakub.
Directed by: Ken Kwapis