So I Married an Axe Murderer (93 minutes)
Comedians always get each other work, you have to admire that.
Have you ever put a movie on thinking you’ve never seen it before, and then once it starts you’re like: “Oh shit, I have seen this before!” In our house, we call this a “Soapdish”, eloquently named after the 1991 film Soapdish because we did it TWICE with this movie within the same year. It was wild, but did give us the opportunity to coin an excellent piece of new terminology.
So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993), is the opposite of a Soapdish. We put this on thinking we had both seen it and then it turns out— neither of us had. Why did I think I had seen this before? Did I confuse it with Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead? Or with Throw Momma from the Train? What was with the long movie titles and death? At any rate, I thought I had seen it but I hadn’t so this post is already different than what I had originally planned in my head.
Quick Plot Overview! Charlie MacKenzie (Mike Myers) is a paranoid beat poet — yes that is a job in this universe— who frequently ends his relationships based on paranoia or strange ticks. “She smelled like soup” is a favorite of mine. His best friend Tony Giardino (Anthony LaPaglia) is a recently promoted detective who encourages Charlie to be less nitpicky. A chance meeting with butcher Harriet (Nancy Travis) changes Charlie’s life when he falls in love with her… and also suspects she might be the serial killer known only as “Mrs. X”.
Within ten minutes of this movie, I was thinking about Austin Powers and not just because of Mike Myers— I can watch Wayne’s World without seeing any connection to his later characters. Even though he is playing a pretty basic character without any schtick (a rarity for him) there are certain mannerisms within the first ten minutes that hint at the Austin Powers character to come. An eyebrow raise. The delivery of a joke to his friend. Even the words of his poem during his poetry performance feel Powersesque. The clip below will give you a hint into what I mean.
This thought was further solidified later in the movie when we meet Charlie’s Scottish parents. His very Scottish father is also played by Myers and is both a callback to his SNL performances and a glimpse at his later Fat Bastard character. Hell, at one point he even delivers a line by saying “evil” as “eevil”. The question I have is this: was this an early attempt at later characters and overall comedic energy OR is Mike Myers just unoriginal? In my head, he looms large as a comedy great. But I go to his IMDB and his career is largely based on Wayne’s World, Austin Powers, and Shrek. Properties that just keep creating work for him over and over again. Did he get caught up in a bad cycle? Is this the ideal comedy lifestyle? I mean, he technically hasn’t become “worse” a la Adam Sandler, so maybe this was the way to do it.
He is, as always, quotable. For better and for worse. And two things that will live with me from this movie are the “Woman! Whoaaa man!” poetry riff from the aforementioned clip. And Myers walking into rooms doing an insane “HELLO!” Which, try as I might, I have been unable to locate a clip of. If you find one PLEASE message me.
The cast for this movie is filled with people I love— Anthony LaPaglia and Debi Mazar for starters, who appear in this as a couple well before Empire Records. Mazar looks amazing with perfect hair and makeup as always. (God I love her). And supporting cast gets a lift from fellow SNL cast member Phil Hartman as a guard at Alcatraz. That scene is really weird by the way because do San Franciscans just go to Alcatraz for fun? There’s also a cameo by Cosmo Kramer himself - Michael Richards. Comedians always get each other work, you have to admire that. But while there is all this talent active in the movie, the characters they play aren’t memorable and that’s a bummer. The only one who pulls it off, of course, is an uncredited Alan Arkin playing Tony’s police chief. The chief is soft and spends his time on screen trying to become more grizzled like the chiefs in police procedurals.
Normally I am on here throwing praise around for a tight 90-minute script, no matter how inspired the movie is, and So I Married an Axe Murderer doesn’t achieve that. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s very neutral. I see why they played it on Comedy Central 24-hours a day. But for a short film, neutral is very painful. We spend way too much time with Charlie and Harriet “falling in love”, ending with a really bad montage. Frank and I theorized these were just deleted scenes stuck together to create the illusion of a montage. Their chemistry isn’t very cute and at times straight-up weird vacillating from kooky to deeply wounded. Their romance is uneven in a poorly written way— not in like a chaotic Buffy and Spike way. Where they shouldn’t be together but you’re rooting for it anyway. I will say that for what the romantic partnership lacks in chemistry, it is somewhat made up by the relationship between Charlie and Tony. (Or maybe… I just really love Anthony LaPaglia??)
The movie is so flat that even though there is a twist at the end that I didn’t see coming— I still wasn’t shocked or surprised! It felt like just another exit on the very neutral journey we had been on so far. (Which is really hard to achieve so maybe we can give them some credit for that.) One other thing I’ll add is that you better love the song “There She Goes” by The Boo Radleys because it is played no less than three times in this movie and it will be stuck in your head for the next few days. Beware.
Ok, so, remember at the start of this whole thing I was mentioning that Mike Myers is a recycler of material? While I was researching this post I came across bits of information about his new mini-series The Pentaverate which just premiered on May 5th. You see, the Pentaverate is a conspiracy theory brought up by Charlie’s dad in one joke in So I Married an Axe Murderer.
All these years later this single joke from a movie with a family of conspiracy theorists is the jumping off point for his newest work. So I ask the question again — is Mike Myers unoriginal? Or is he some sort of postmodern genius?
Either way, So I Married an Axe Murderer, left me wanting.