San Francisco beat poet, Charlie MacKenzie (Mike Myers) has broken up with yet another girlfriend. While discussing this with his cop best friend Tony Giardino (Anthony LaPaglia), Tony tells Charlie he has a problem with commitment and because of his fear he looks for little details in his relationships that he blows up to ridiculous proportion. While buying haggis for his Scottish parents Stuart (Mike Myers) and May (Brenda Fricker), Charlie meets the girl of his dreams in butcher Harriet Michaels (Nancy Travis) and the two hit it off, but when Charlie's mother shares a story from the Weekly World News about black widow Murderer "Mrs. X" who marries men and then kills them on their honeymoon, Charlie begins to suspect Harriet may be Mrs. X.
Beginning development in 1987 from former Orion head Robert N. Fried, Fried enlisted screenwriter Robbie Fox to write a screenplay about how "women are out to destroy us". The film was considered by other leading men such as Woody Allen, Chevy Chase, Albert Brooks, and Martin Short before Mike Myers was chosen. Myers and writer Neil Mullarky extensively rewrote the script with Myers changing the character from Jewish to Scottish and adjusting various other details which lead to conflicts with Robbie Fox that had to be dealt with through the WGA's arbitration project. Thomas Schlamme, who would go on to have an extensive career in TV with his iconic "Walk and Talks" on The West Wing giving that show its unique identity, reportedly found Myers difficult to work with, but also complemented him as dedicated. While the film scored high in test screenings, the movie opened at number 12 on its opening weekend and made only $11 million against its $20 million budget. Along with the underperformance of Wayne's World 2 the same year, it wouldn't be until 4 years later when Myers would headline a successful film with Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Critical reception at the time was mixed with most of them liking the idea more than the execution, but in the year's since the movie as attained a minor cult following with Myers expanding on the conspiracy theories in the film for a forthcoming TV series called The Pentaverate. The movie itself, it's a likable movie but it feels like it's not fully firing on what it promises.
The movie's leads are quite likable and amusing with Myers and co-star Nancy Travis showing some good chemistry that plays well back and forth in the various scenes and you can see seeds of ideas that would be more fully fleshed out in Myers future work such as playing multiple characters or incorporating musical (or in this case poetry) beats into his projects. There's some really amusing bits involving Charlie's parents played by Myers in a dual role and Brenda Fricker and the stuff involving tabloid nonsense is reasonably amusing and feels like a prototype for the similar gag in the Men in Black film. But stealing every scene he's in is unquestionably Anthony LaPaglia as Charlie's best friend Tony. LaPaglia is such a strong character you could've made an entire movie based around him as he's trying to be this gritty 70s style cop who's "on the edge", but he spends all his time filling out paperwork and having pleasant conversations with his captain (played wonderfully by Alan Arkin) who Tony wants to chew him out but is more eager to be a supportive friend.
What holds So I Married an Axe Murderer back is in its failure to commit to the darkness of this premise. When you think of darkly comedic thrillers like this be they the John Waters cult classic Serial Mom to something more mainstream like The 'Burbs, they tend to go "all in" on their dark tones with some scenes feeling not too dissimilar from how they'd be presented in a straight thriller or horror film, except with silly things going on beneath the set dressing. Most of the time So I Married an Axe Murderer looks like a standard rom-com with not much in the way of strange camera angles or feelings of claustrophobia. The one exception to this is in the last 20 minutes where the movie takes place at an isolated hotel in the mountains during a storm and it starts to feel like we're in a thriller universe where the tone is dark but the actions are silly.
So I Married an Axe Murderer has some good moments from a likable cast, but it feels like it's holding back a little more than it should. It kind of reminded me of that movie Motel Hell from 1981 that tried to parody things like Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre but didn't show any gore or violence until the very end of the movie. What we have in So I Married an Axe Murderer isn't bad and it has a likable enough charm to it that makes for pleasant viewing, but you can't help but wonder what if there were a darker edge to this material.
Beginning development in 1987 from former Orion head Robert N. Fried, Fried enlisted screenwriter Robbie Fox to write a screenplay about how "women are out to destroy us". The film was considered by other leading men such as Woody Allen, Chevy Chase, Albert Brooks, and Martin Short before Mike Myers was chosen. Myers and writer Neil Mullarky extensively rewrote the script with Myers changing the character from Jewish to Scottish and adjusting various other details which lead to conflicts with Robbie Fox that had to be dealt with through the WGA's arbitration project. Thomas Schlamme, who would go on to have an extensive career in TV with his iconic "Walk and Talks" on The West Wing giving that show its unique identity, reportedly found Myers difficult to work with, but also complemented him as dedicated. While the film scored high in test screenings, the movie opened at number 12 on its opening weekend and made only $11 million against its $20 million budget. Along with the underperformance of Wayne's World 2 the same year, it wouldn't be until 4 years later when Myers would headline a successful film with Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Critical reception at the time was mixed with most of them liking the idea more than the execution, but in the year's since the movie as attained a minor cult following with Myers expanding on the conspiracy theories in the film for a forthcoming TV series called The Pentaverate. The movie itself, it's a likable movie but it feels like it's not fully firing on what it promises.
The movie's leads are quite likable and amusing with Myers and co-star Nancy Travis showing some good chemistry that plays well back and forth in the various scenes and you can see seeds of ideas that would be more fully fleshed out in Myers future work such as playing multiple characters or incorporating musical (or in this case poetry) beats into his projects. There's some really amusing bits involving Charlie's parents played by Myers in a dual role and Brenda Fricker and the stuff involving tabloid nonsense is reasonably amusing and feels like a prototype for the similar gag in the Men in Black film. But stealing every scene he's in is unquestionably Anthony LaPaglia as Charlie's best friend Tony. LaPaglia is such a strong character you could've made an entire movie based around him as he's trying to be this gritty 70s style cop who's "on the edge", but he spends all his time filling out paperwork and having pleasant conversations with his captain (played wonderfully by Alan Arkin) who Tony wants to chew him out but is more eager to be a supportive friend.
What holds So I Married an Axe Murderer back is in its failure to commit to the darkness of this premise. When you think of darkly comedic thrillers like this be they the John Waters cult classic Serial Mom to something more mainstream like The 'Burbs, they tend to go "all in" on their dark tones with some scenes feeling not too dissimilar from how they'd be presented in a straight thriller or horror film, except with silly things going on beneath the set dressing. Most of the time So I Married an Axe Murderer looks like a standard rom-com with not much in the way of strange camera angles or feelings of claustrophobia. The one exception to this is in the last 20 minutes where the movie takes place at an isolated hotel in the mountains during a storm and it starts to feel like we're in a thriller universe where the tone is dark but the actions are silly.
So I Married an Axe Murderer has some good moments from a likable cast, but it feels like it's holding back a little more than it should. It kind of reminded me of that movie Motel Hell from 1981 that tried to parody things like Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre but didn't show any gore or violence until the very end of the movie. What we have in So I Married an Axe Murderer isn't bad and it has a likable enough charm to it that makes for pleasant viewing, but you can't help but wonder what if there were a darker edge to this material.