Summary Capsule
Charlie, your typical Scottish nobody in San Fransisco, falls in love with and marries a saucy butcher who turns out to be...
Summary Capsule
| reviews |
Justin's Rating: Cameo Award Of The Year
Justin's Review: This movie makes me laugh. It makes me laugh every time I see it. More, perhaps, than the time before. It's so screwball and genuinely funny that it needs to have all the people it can get to crusade for its upcoming popularity. That means YOU, buckaroo!
So I Married An Axe Murderer is the one Mike Meyers comedy that never really took off into the puddle of national conciousness. Unlike Wayne's World or Austin Powers, Charlie (Meyers) in Axe Murderer is much more of a normal fellow and less of a parody. His world is that of an off-kilter comedy, with only the best and snarkiest of guests are allowed in.
Charlie is a man on the prowl, possibly because the movie script failed to give him a job. Now, I'm not sure if this was an intentional in-joke or not, but I've had many a discussion with friends about what exactly Charlie does for a living. They never say! He's always hanging out with his friends or girlfriend at their place of work, but never seems to have a pressing need to get somewhere. Maybe he's a male prostitute. This sort of thing will bug me to no end. Charlie lives in San Fransisco, and is unhappy with every dating possibility that comes along, for some Seinfeldian reason or another ("She smelled like soup" - about Pam). He's unhappy, that is, until he bumps into *THE ONE*, a smiling pixie of a chick who puts his groove on in many a fashion.
Seriously, I'm starting to lose the ability to write normal English. This site is bad for me.
This might have been your average run-o-the-mill romantic comedy, except that practically everyone in Charlie's world is stranger than the av-er-age bear. His best friend Tony (Anthony LaPaglia) is an undercover cop with a job crisis; namely, it's just not as thrilling as it seems like on TV. His father (also played by Meyers) is a haughty Scottish coot. His mother, a brazen hussy. His brother, a mute kid with an oversized cranium.
So when Charlie meets Harriet (Nancy Travis), she comes across as the sanest kid on the block. Everyone: "At FIRST..." But as Charlie's falling in love with her, he can't help but notice her more peculiar habits, and starts to suspect her as a serial killer. Is she or isn't she? Who cares, as long as it keeps the plot moving, I say!
This is such a great forum for Meyer's talents. He can alternately play the comedy quack and the straight man, just being funny for funny's sake. He's a little neurotic, but that's no shocker - aren't we all? If Charlie's life was taken into a sitcom format, I guarantee you it'd be one of the most popular on the tube, he's that quotable.
Playing out in an episodic format, Charlie encounters even stranger wildlife than friends and family. Phil Hartman has one of his most memorable roles as a dour-faced Alcatraz guard named Vickie. Hartman always had a talent to turn a glare into something hilarious, and his speech about "what the other guards won't tell you" ranks up in my top five of the best monologues in movie history. Well worth the price of admission alone.
And we haven't even mentioned some of the other faces that pop in to say hi, including Michael Richards (Kramer), Alan Arkin, Steven Wright, and Charles Grodin. These scenes are usually when Meyers plays the straight man, and it's to his credit that he seems to hold his own.
Probably the only negative thing I can say about SIMAAM is about the scene "the morning after". A pair of shapely legs descends a staircase, and I was tricked into thinking they were a girl's before the camera panned up to show all of Charlie. I don't need that. It makes me question my sexuality, or at least my ability to identify male and female anatomies. Mike Meyers, at least grow some leg hair, please!
So I Married An Axe Murderer is a laugh riot, and should not be missed in your rental schedule unless you had a funeral or something to go to. It gets better with each viewing, which might just result in my death from overhilarity.
PoolMan's Rating: One large capucino, minus the cinnamon, and not enough whip cream.
PoolMan's Review: Every once in a while, your friends (the wierd ones who work in chocolate stores, and the like) start raving like loonies about a movie that you missed. "Oh man, you have to see this, it's just too funny!" And
you start to nod, and you start to believe, and as they feed one-liner after one-liner into your head you start to think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. And you curse the day you turned down seeing it. So you rush out to the video store, grab the box, and run home (forgetting your car entirely) to see it. And then you're INEVITABLY let down, not because it's bad, but because you expected more. Enter the Axe Murderer...
SIMAAM (because I'm too lazy to type it out... oh no wait, this was longer, wasn't it?) tells the story of a man named Charlie who finds wonderful women to date, yet constantly rejects them early on in the relationship because of his own immature fears of rejection. He nitpicks. Heavily. Enter new wonderful woman, Harriet, who is a butcher at a store Charlie buys haggis from. (GREAT Scottish references throughout this movie, by the way). They chat, they date, they rut like weasels. But when Harriet's checkered past starts to resemble the story of a serial killer Charlie's mom read about in a tabloid, Charlie once again superimposes an unjustified reputation on his lady fair... or is it unjustified?
This movie is fun, no doubt, but it seemed like there was a constant need for a commercial break. The part that REALLY made this movie funny to me was Charlie's heavily Scottish father. The man is funny beyond description in that "oh my goodness, he didn't REALLY just say that, did he?" sort of way. It's a combination of this character and the other small "back bits" (the poetry club, the horny mom, the butcher jokes) that bring the film to life, not the main plot. There are great points to this flick, sometimes to the point of insane hilarity (I just about died hearing some of the lines listed below), but not quite enough. I'm not sorry I saw SIMAAM, but truth be told, it was a lot like drinking beer from a teacup. Sure, it's fun, it's good, but do you really need to bother?
DnaError's Rating: Kooky Kharacters
DnaError's Review: In honor of the freelance poetry in this movie, I'll present my review in beat poem prose. Hit it Sam....
Meyer's Movie, Funny in parts, didn't make me mad.
But drags on, a little to long, not enough Scottish Dad.
YEAH!
To expand on my little ditty, I first saw "So I married an Axe Murderer" at a weird time. I was having a powerfully nasty case of the flu and was dizzy with fever and tripping on Nyquil. To help pass the time in-between vomiting and sweating, I was watching HBO and this movie came on. Being a hard-core Mike Meyers fan, I decided to watch it. To say the least, I didn't like it...maybe it was the fierce bacterial battle raging inside me, but I couldn't get into it. After that, I saw 54, and I almost swore off Mike Meyers forever....then Austin Powers came along and I decided to give SIMAXM another chance now that I was no longer hovering over the toilet asking God to please kill me.
Well, I no longer hate it. The movie is genuinely funny, full of clever one-liners and kooky characters. The kookiest character being the Dad, a dangerously Scottish man who hates the KFC Colnel and loudly blasts bagpipe music while cleaning his pictures of Sean Connery. The main problem with this movie is that there isn't enough of him! Meyers is at his best when his playing slightly off-kilter characters; Dieter, Wayne Cambell, Austin Powers, Dr. Evil, or this Dad. Here, the main character he plays some vague, generic average guy whose name I can't even remember. The character, aside from having a fear of commitment and writing pop-culture-based poetry, is completely uninteresting without his kooky, kooky dad.
So, that's my verdict, a good rental or TV movie with Meyers, a good amount of chuckles and, that's right, Kookiness. Just, try to watch it when you're in good health.
| extras |
 1993 Rated PG-13 Comedy Romance Mystery Director
Starring
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Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits?
No.
The Movie Store!
Intermission!
So what IS Charlie's job? Charlie does say he *used* to work at his father's butcher shop, but no longer. He does write poetry and performs with a band... maybe that's it?
[PoolMan] I'm definitely a Mike Meyers fan. This film, along with Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery both feature Mike playing two characters in the same film. I think that's a great commentary on his skills as an actor, especially since the character pairs are so diametrically opposed to each other. Do you think he'll one-up himself and go for three next time?
[Justin] A testimony to this film. Because of This Movie, my friend Lance and I have subscribed and become avid fans of The Weekly World News.
Official and Not-So-Official Websites
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Stuart: Head! Paper! Now!
Stuart: Now go and kiss your mother or I'll kick your teeth in!
May: Charlie, hand me the paper.
Charlie: Mom, I find it interesting that you call The Weekly World News "the paper." A paper contains facts.
Harriet: Do you actually like haggis?
Charlie: No, I think it's repellent in every way. In fact, I think most Scottish cuisine is based on a dare.
Charlie: Marry me.
Harriet: No.
Charlie: Please?
Harriet: What do you look for in a woman you date?
Charlie: Well, I know everyone always says sense of humor, but I'd really have to go with breast size.
Stuart: Would ya look at the size of that kid's head! It's a virtual planetoid and it has it's own weather system! Looks like an orange on a toothpick!
Stuart: I'm not kidding, that boy's head is like Sputnik; spherical but quite pointy at parts! Aye, now that was offsides, now wasn't it? He'll be crying himself to sleep tonight, on his huge pillow.
Charlie: You know, what this room needs is a really big oversized poster of Atlantic City...oh wait, there's one.
Tony: What about Pam?
Charlie: She smelled like soup.
Charlie: Excuse me, miss? There seems to be a mistake. I believe I ordered the *large* cappucino.....HELLO!
Stuart: Well, it's a well known fact, Sunny Jim, that there's a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world, known as The Pentaveret, who run everything in the world, including the newspapers, and meet triannually at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows.
Charlie: Have you ever brutally murdered anyone?
Harriet: Well, brutal's a subjective term. What's brutal to one person might be entirely reasonable to someone else.
Pilot: That's the artificial horizon, which is better than the actual horizon.
Pilot: Actually, I have no concept of time.
Charlie: I like the nightlife....I like to boogie.
Charlie: I was just naked just then....very nude.
Newspaper man: Oh, ho, yes, yes! I'm insensitive! I'm a very insensitive man! Stop your jobs! Look at the insensitive man! That's what they're paying you for!
Stuart: We have a piper down! I repeat, a piper is down.
Stuart: I like this one, Charlie. She's quite a filly.
Stuart: Oh, I hated the colonel, with his *wee beady* eyes, and that smart look on his face...Oh, you're going to buy my chicken! Ooooh!
Charlie: Dad, how can you hate "The Colonel"?
Stuart: Because he puts a secret ingredient in his chicken that makes ya crave it for it nightly, smartass!
Charlie: Eeevil...like its the frooits of the deveel.....Eeevil!
Vicky: Hello everyone, I am a park ranger and I will be leading you on the tour. All of the park rangers here at Alcatraz were at one time guards, myself included. My name is John Johnson, but everyone here calls me Vicky. Will you please follow me.
Charlie: I'm naked right now, aren't I?
Stuart: And Charlie, don't forget to light a match!
Soundtrack Review
[PoolMan] I don't mind telling you, the opening track gave me a feeling like I was chewing tinfoil, fresh from getting a new filling. I was relieved to hear the Spin Doctors in the middle, but then that damned same opening tune plays THREE TIMES throughout! I could have killed someone! [Justin] I personally liked the opening track, but my favorite is "Saturday Night", which Stuart gets down and funky to in the film. The CD is a pretty good buy, which we played during college a lot. It all comes down to whether you like the song, "Two Princes" by The Spin Doctors.
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