DVD (1993) Written by Robbie Fox/Directed by Thomas Schlamme

(Photo: TriStar Pictures)

Suspecting your loved one of being a serial killer: we’ve all been there. But for San Francisco poet Charlie Mackenzie, this kind of thing is becoming a habit: every girlfriend is mentally ill, or smells like soup, or steals his cats. At least according to him. Charlie has a serious fear of commitment, and as he reads yet one more of his mournful doomed-relationship poems at open-mic night, it doesn’t look as if any woman will ever be good enough for him.

But love and haggis are in the air, and Charlie (played by Mike Myers) soon meets the smart and pretty Harriet Michaels (Nancy Travis) at her butcher shop downtown. Charlie is smitten and things are going well — until he convinces himself that the sweet little Harriet is actually what the Weekly World News calls Mrs. X, the infamous Honeymoon Murderer who marries, kills, then disappears into the night in search of another victim. Will Charlie push through his paranoia and find happiness with Harriet, or will he leave her just like he’s left all the others?

As goofy and as fluffy as this movie is, So I Married an Axe Murderer is impossible to hate. Nancy Travis has never been the most convincing actress, but there is a cute chemistry between her and Myers  and I like her a lot here. As for Myers, he steals the show from himself, playing a second role as Charlie’s perpetually-smashed insult-wielding father. In his thick Scottish brogue, Stuart Mackenzie nags his son Charlie for being a mamma’s boy (“Float away, ya fairy!”) and sloppily sings the wrong lyrics to every song he knows. Axe Murderer, which is unique in the rom-com world because it’s told from the guy’s point of view, is a classic in my books. It’s no Roman Holiday, but it is a lot of fun and it’s a great pick if you’re wary of “chick flicks.”

Sweet extras Watch for the scene where Myers as Stuart Mackenzie rants about his conspiracy theories involving the pope, the queen, and Colonel Sanders. Anthony LaPaglia, who plays Charlie’s friend Tony, can’t keep himself from cracking up, and you can tell he’s laughing for real.

The envelope, please I award Axe Murderer the following prizes:

Best wedding dress in a rom-com: This gothic-looking hooded chiffon and satin wedding death, I mean “‘dress,”  is gorgeous. How I’d love to float down the aisle (or through a cemetery) in that beautiful thing.

Best honeymoon destination in a rom-com: The fictional Poet’s Corner Inn, a neo-classical mansion snuggled in the mountains, is a lovers paradise. Well, it would be if it were real. The mountains you see behind the inn are  fake, and the inn itself is actually the Dunsmuir-Hellman Historic Estate. You can’t stay overnight, but you CAN get married there (and murdered too, perhaps?).

Good for who? An excellent choice for the gal or guy who detests romantic comedies, but feels the pressure to rent/download one for a romantic night in. Guys, if you and your wife/girlfriend/weekend lover don’t LOL at this movie, I will personally send a handwritten letter of apology to you.  Note to the Baptist minister’s wife: Sorry I said “weekend lover” up there, and second, this movie is probably a wee bit too racy for you. Sexual content is no big deal (unless you count Mike Myers bare bottom, but it’s played for laughs — nothing sexy about it), but the language is a little jarring with two F-bombs and a light peppering of other words throughout.

Loved this movie? Live this movie! The Weekly World News is 100% true — that’s a fact.

Charlie’s mother refers to the Weekly World News scandal rag as “the paper” and to her, the content of this paper is irrefutable. Cigarette in hand, she peruses the paper each evening, learning about the world around her. You can too! The infamous Weekly World News — which gave us the truth about Hitler’s gaggle of love children as well as tales of the flesh-starved Bat Boy —  stopped its hard copy version in 2007, but its website is still going. If you care about the facts and nothing but the facts, you’ll get your news here and only here: http://weeklyworldnews.com/

Samples and first lines from today’s WWN headline news, for January 2011:

Kim Kardashian crisis: “Tragedy struck Kim Kardashian last night on a private flight from New Jersey to Las Vegas.  Her left butt cheek exploded.”

Megan Fox marries but she’s still a man: “WWN has confirmed that Megan Fox married Brian Austin Green on June 24th.  WWN also confirmed that she is still a man. … One guest overheard Fox saying she thought she looked like Alan Alda in her wedding gown.”

Mike Tyson has a pigeon fetish: “…Tyson, 44, will exhibit an unfamiliar, and sometimes uncomfortable, tender side as he shows the depth of his love for pigeons.”

Tuna boy of New Jersey: “A rare mutation happened to Fred Allan on the way to his Thanksgiving feast.  His head turned into a Tuna. Last week, Fred Allan, an angler who went missing three miles off the coast of New Jersey, was spotted in Jersey City on his way to a Thanksgiving feast. Fred sat through his Thanksgiving meal with his family without them noticing that his head had turned into a tuna. … It wasn’t until he was walking home when a little boy, Chucky Thompson, saw Fred on the street and screamed, “Your head is a tuna fish!”

Paula Jane