Classic Movie Review: 'So I Married an Ax Murderer'

So I Married an Ax Murderer (1993)

Directed by Thomas Schlamme

Written by Robbie Fox

Starring Mike Myers, Nancy Travis, Anthony LaPaglia, Brenda Fricker, Alan Arkin

Release Date July 30th, 1993

Published August 4th, 2023

I feel like I should like the movie So I Married an Ax Murderer. I have the impression of the movie as a light hearted romp with a true crime twist. It sounds charming in description: Nice guy meets a woman who happens to have a bad history with men who disappear after marrying her. There are things about it that sound like a fun twist on the true crime and rom-com genre. And yet, every time I try watching So I Married an Ax Murderer, the film sets off the pedantic, cranky side of my personality. I like to think of myself as a pretty chill, relatively relaxed guy, but when I watch So I Married an Ax Murderer, my skin crawls and I get easily irritated.

So I Married an Ax Murderer stars Mike Myers as Charlie. Charlie is a poet in San Francisco. Is being a poet in a coffee shop his job? He doesn't appear to have any other means of support so I guess that's what we are supposed to believe. Through Charlie's poetry, set to the beat of improvised jazz, we learn that Charlie is finicky about women. His most recent break up was dubiously related to his belief that his ex-girlfriend stole his cat. Charlie's best friend, a police detective, Tony (Anthony LaPaglia), believes Charlie is too hard on the women he dates and too picky about minor flaws they may or may not have. He thinks Charlie is simply afraid of commitment.

This notion will be put to the test when Charlie meets Harriet (Nancy Travis), a beautiful woman who seems to speak his strange comic language. The two vibe over Charlie helping Harriet on a tough and busy day at her family Butcher Shop. Charlie's Dad, also played by Myers, was also a Butcher back in the day so Charlie volunteers to work for Harriet as a way to get the chance to hit on her all day. The two flirt mercilessly, mostly via various cuts of meat, and I am in cringing just thinking about this scene. I can't help it. I kept thinking, this is her place of business, she's busy with a line of customers, and this guy is doing meat based schtick. She encourages it, but I only find that equally frustrating.

The meaty flirtation leads to the two spending the night together and helps Charlie locate the first red flag about this new relationship. Harriet has a habit of talking and moaning in her sleep while talking about someone named Ralph. When confronted about Ralph, Harriet doesn't want to talk about it. Nor does Harriet want to talk about any aspect of her past, especially the number of times she's previously been married. By coincidence, Charlie's mom (Brenda Fricker), shows him a copy of the Weekly World News tabloid which has a story about a marrying serial killer who seduces and kills husbands. The pattern matches with some of Harriet's backstory and Charlie begins to end the relationship, thinking she might be a serial killer.

This whole sequence where Charlie suspects Harriet may be a murderer is nearly as cringe-inducing as the Butcher Shop sequence. Problems that might be solved by an honest conversation are exacerbated by a pair of idiots trapped in moronic plot. It is a major pet peeve of mine when two characters could end the movie by having one big conversation but they don't because the movie needs to trip its way through several more contrived set pieces. Had Charlie, at any point, sat Harriet down and had a genuine, open conversation, the movie ends. Either she's evasive and that leads to the end of their relationship, or she's honest with him and the two work through their problems before being confronted by what really happened to Harriet's previous husbands.

I feel like I am being too hard on this movie. It's clear that not that much thought was given to the plot. As with most Mike Myers movies, So I Married an Ax Murderer is not about telling a satisfying story. Rather, the movie is merely a stage that is set for Myers' comic mind to rush from one idea to the next in hope of finding a funny gag. Sometimes he's successful, often times, he's not successful and we are left to watch Myers flail about searching for a way to get a scene to the needed ending or punchline to set up the next set piece.

I have a complicated relationship to Mike Myers. I enjoyed the first Wayne's World and Austin Powers movies. Everything else Myers has ever made have been weighed down by this Myers quality that leads him to have to have everyone's attention all the time. Every role he plays seems to scream 'look at me, look at me!' Whether it serves the point of the scene or not, Myers demands that we look at him and see that he is in any scene, desperately calling for our attention. A great example is the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, a not great movie on its own, that has Myers forcefully bringing the film to a halt so that he can bombastically tell the band Queen, the subject of the film, that no one is ever going to listen to a song like Bohemian Rhapsody.

Just writing that made my skin crawl with the level of Mike Myers-meta attached. He can't just be in a scene with other actors, it has to be about him. That's why I made a point of missing his recent comeback attempt on Netflix, The Pentaverate. That show was built around Myers playing something like 9 different characters. It's a concept that plays to his worst, nastiest, and most self-indulgent qualities. Playing multiple characters in a movie is something Myers has grown insistent upon because, much like the famed Simpsons' character Poochie, when Myers isn't on screen we all need to be talking about Mike Myers and wondering what Mike Myers thinks and may be doing and forget it, he's just going to play all of the characters in the scene to satisfy his egotistical desire to have all of the world's attention on him.

Okay, I apologize, This is shifting quickly from a movie review to a rant about why I don't enjoy the work of Mike Myers and that's not what I had intended. I merely wanted to try and understand why I don't enjoy So I Married an Ax Murderer when it has so many good things about it. I love Nancy Travis, she has the sweetest face. I adore Anthony LaPaglia a man of many faces, voices and talents who can enhance any movie he's in. And the movie has one of the most charming and wonderful performances in the lengthy career of national treasure Alan Arkin, who recently passed away. Arkin's subplot as the nicest Police Chief in movie history is a clever joke about the conventions of movies featuring police officers.

But, there it is, I just can't get past the Mike Myers' qualities of So I Married an Ax Murderer. I find Myers to be obnoxious. I find that his antics don't charm me, rather they fill me with anxiety. I want him to stop doing schtick and just be a person and I am not sure he's capable of that as an actor. He seems to fear that if he isn't always doing a bit that people will forget that he's the star of the movie. That's why he fills me with dread and anxiety, he's so insecurely desperate for our attention as a movie star that he can't relax on screen and just be in a scene. I think I have cracked the code. As someone who struggles with anxiety and confidence, I see a mirror in Myers' work and it triggers me.

Okay, so that is sorted. So I Married an Ax Murderer is the subject of the next episode of my new Spinoff Podcast from the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast, Everyone's a Critic 1993. Every other week, myself and my co-hosts, Gen-Z'er M.J and Gen-X'er Amy, watch movies from 1993 in release order and talk about how movies and culture have changed in the past 30 years. You can hear the Everyone's a Critic 1993 Podcast on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast feed, wherever you listen to Podcasts.