Street Date: June 17

Official Synopsis:
Comedy sensation Mike Myers stars with Nancy Travis in this hatchet-driven romantic comedy about a wedlock-shy coffee house poet who finally meets the perfect woman. When it comes to love, Charlie Mackenzie has had his share of bad luck: Sherri was a klepto - Charlie still can't find his cat. Jill was unemployed - but Charlie knew she really worked for the Mafia. Pam smelled like soup - beef vegetable soup. Good thing for Charlie these shortcomings become apparent, if only to him. Good thing for Charlie he discovered the truth before things went too far - before he stumbled into MARRIAGE! Because to Charlie the "M" word is just one step away from the fate foretold in that chilling phrase: "Till death do us part." When Charlie meets Harriet Michaels everything changes. Harriet's not like the others. She's smart, sexy, and crazy about Charlie. This time Charlie is determined to overcome the fears that sabotaged his past relationships. This time, he's ready for some commitment. Sure, Harriet may have her shortcomings - but so what? After all those other women, what's the worst she could be? An axe murderer?

  
Our Take:
While Mike Myers will always be remembered as Austin Powers to most (and maybe Wayne Campbell to a select few), he’ll always be Charlie MacKenzie to me. So I Married an Axe Murderer is by far Myers’ funniest movie, and I’m including all the Shreks, all the Austin Powers’, and both Wayne’s World movies in that equation.

What makes it so great? I wish I could tell you. It’s one of those films that’s simply funny from start to finish. Every joke hits the pitch perfect note that it’s supposed to. Myers is great as everyguy Charlie and even funnier as Charlie’s Scottish dad (a proto-Shrek character); his chemistry is terrific with Nancy Travis; and Anthony LaPaglia, Alan Arkin, and the late, great Phil Hartman are all terrific in supporting roles. But there’s nothing I can specifically put my finger on as to what makes it so funny. All I can say is that if you’ve seen the film you know exactly what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t seen the film, you really need to go out and experience one of the funniest movies of the 90s.

In what seems like a move designed to cash in on the upcoming release of Myers’ new film, The Love Guru, Sony has released So I Married an Axe Murderer as a Special Edition DVD. Great, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. In fact, it went something like this:

“I can’t wait to see what extra features there are on it! Wait, wait… what? There are none? None at all? But it says ‘Special Edition’ right there on the cover! What the hell?”

So there you have it, folks, this is officially the world’s Worst Special Edition DVD Ever. You read that correctly, there isn’t even one single extra feature on this DVD. Not even a trailer. The closest you get is a download code on a sticker on the front of the disc case that allows you to download eight songs from the film’s soundtrack for free. That would be much more exciting if it weren’t for the fact that the soundtrack has 11 songs on it. Come on, seriously? They couldn’t even get that right! I have absolutely no idea how they justify calling this a Special Edition in any way, shape , or form.

The film has also been released on Blu-ray disc. I thought perhaps the Blu-ray would provide some special features, but it’s exactly the same as the standard DVD edition. Of course, the picture quality is much better. Image clarity is about as good as you can expect from a mid-90s, low budget comedy, and the soundtrack is pretty decent as well for a coedic flick. But this isn’t really the kind of film that offers a lot for Blu-ray players to show off, so it’s not like some world-altering improvement to the film.

While normally I would give any version of So I Married an Axe Murderer a “HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!” stamp because I love the movie so much, the fact of the matter is that there’s absolutely no reason to buy this DVD if you already own the previous edition of it. The worst part is that I was thinking we’d finally get a decent DVD edition of one of my favorite comedies of all time, and instead we get absolutely nothing special at all.  

HIGHLY DISAPPOINTING!

Overall Picture:
Movie: A+
DVD: F

- Mike Spring

Editor