So I Married an Axe Murderer
Charlie Mackenzie (Mike Myers) is a lovesick coffee house poet with eccentric parents and a string of failed relationships. When he meets butcher’s shopkeeper Harriet Michaels (Nancy Travis) all this seems to change: even to his paranoid mind she is cute, fun and intelligent. In fact, it appears that she is the woman he has been looking for. As Harriet and Charlie approach their wedding day however Charlie has suspicions that his bride-to-be is hiding a terrible secret…
Combining the dry comic style of Myers and the directing talent behind The West Wing and Friends was a marriage made in heaven (no pun intended!). There are well delivered gags that are genuinely funny and there is a surprising carefree romantic element. Myers himself plays not only the central character but his zany Scottish father (it’s easy to see where Shrek’s brogue-type accent came from). The supporting characters are also well cast: Anthony LaPaglia is particularly outstanding as Charlie’s long suffering best friend who has issues with his boss at the police station being too…’nice’; Phil Hartman is brilliant as the Alcatraz tour guide and Brenda Fricker is perfectly cast as Charlie’s mother.
Of course, the film centres on Charlie and the possibility that Harriet could be the infamous serial murderess who kills her husbands on their wedding night. This takes the film from harmless romantic comedy to a parody of Psycho-style slasher films when the axe murderer’s identity is revealed towards the end; there are also the more mundane ups and downs of their relationship that most viewers can relate to. Instead of coming across as misogynistic (the writers came up with the idea after discussing relationship problems) it can be enjoyed by both male and female viewers alike and avoids straying into excessive sentimentality.
In Summary
So I Married an Axe Murderer is well written, charming and above all funny. Although Mike Myers is better known for his more recent films such as Shrek and the Austin Powers trilogy, this is probably one of his funniest films: some fine performances from the supporting cast, the San Francisco locations and witty script make for an enjoyable and quite literally sharp comedy.
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