So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer Trailer-Cops & Robbersons; High School High; Joe Dirt; Big Daddy
Rating
Year Of Production	1993
Running Time	89:32
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Thomas Schlamme
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Mike Myers Nancy Travis Anthony LaPaglia Amanda Plummer Brenda Fricker
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$36.95	Music	Bruce Broughton

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 4.1 L-C-R-S-Sub (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Mike Myers has always had a very high opinion of himself. I don't agree, but he's the one with the money. I think there may be an inverse correlation between how funny one of his movies is, and the number of parts he plays in it. In So I Married An Axe Murderer he plays two parts: a beat poet called Charlie MacKenzie, and Charlie's father (not his aunt). This means that the movie mostly works, but has some awkward bits (many of them involving the father). If he'd restricted himself to one part, maybe it would have been funnier - hard to tell.

    So I Married An Axe Murderer does not hide its main plot point - a bit hard when it is in the movie title. Charlie meets a young woman called Harriet (Nancy Travis - she has been in a number of movies, but I remember her from the TV sitcom Almost Perfect). Harriet is a butcher, as so many young women are. Charlie is attracted to her, and is determined to give the relationship a chance - he has a history of destroying relationships with imagined fears, as he is reminded by his best friend Tony (Anthony LaPaglia - not exactly wasted in the role, but he has done better). So Charlie ends up marrying Harriet, despite several signs that she might be Mrs X - a black widow who marries and murders men, according to Charlie's mother's favourite newspaper: the Weekly World News (something like The National Enquirer, one gathers). Things don't go completely smoothly...

    There are cameos by some comedians of considerably greater stature than Mike Myers: Phil Hartman as Alcatraz tour guide Vickie, Steven Wright as a pilot, Charles Grodin as the driver who won't let Tony commandeer his car, even Greg Germann (Richard Fish on Ally McBeal) as the desk clerk.

    Basically this is a one-joke movie that almost works. It is mildly entertaining, especially when you are not in a critical mood. (You know I'm going to get e-mails from the Mike Myers Fan Club, don't you?)

    Instead of my last paragraph grumble I'm just going to mention an item of trivia - on the cover of this DVD Mike Myers is shown on the left and Nancy Travis on the right. I thought I remembered them being on opposite sides on the poster, and this is supported by the on-line images of the R1 DVD - it looks like someone reversed the image in making the cover of the R4 disc.

Video

    The picture is surprisingly good. This film has all the hallmarks of a "quickie" - it's a minor movie, on a single-sided/single layered disc, with no extras but trailers, but they've put a bit more work into it, and it shows - the picture is definitely better than you'd expect. The only catch is that there appear to be two glitches in the coding that trip up Pioneer DVD players - there is a minor glitch at 30:19, and a serious one at 50:45 - the latter causes the image to freeze, and the sound to continue between 50:45 and 50:52. These glitches did not affect a Sony player, but were confirmed on two separate copies of this DVD.

    The theatrical aspect ratio of this movie was 1.85:1. The DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced which is acceptable.

    The picture is fairly sharp, with rather good shadow detail. There is no low-level noise.

    Colour is good. There are some well-saturated colours on display, especially Harriet's red cheong-sam. There's no trace of over-saturation or colour bleed..

    There are some tiny film artefacts, but nothing more than tiny specks and spots. There are traces of aliasing, particularly on the usual suspects (car grilles, for example), but you have to look hard to see them. There are moments of moire, but they're barely noticeable. There's some background shimmer, but no other MPEG artefacts. All in all, this is rather a clean transfer.

    There are subtitles in 21 languages. I only watched those in English - they are reasonably accurate, and well-timed.

    As previously mentioned, the disc is single sided and single layered. Thus, there is no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is presented in five languages, but my lack of knowledge restricted me to the English one. The cover describes the English soundtrack as 4.0 (3 front channels and mono surround, no LFE), but my Sony player reports it as 3/1.1 (L-C-R front channels, mono surround, plus LFE), a configuration I've personally never seen before. To be honest, I don't know why they bothered with the surround channel, because there's nothing directed to the rear except for one short effect at around 84:50.

    The dialogue is clear enough, and readily intelligible. I noticed no audio sync problems.

    The score is credited to Bruce Broughton. It's nothing special, but it does the job.

    The surround speakers are not noticeable throughout. There's no use of the subwoofer, but it would have had almost nothing to do, anyway.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is static and silent. Easy to operate.

Trailers 

    There are five trailers:

• So I Married an Axe Murderer (2:07)
• Cops and Robbersons (1:45)
• High School High (1:42)
• Joe Dirt (1:54)
• Big Daddy (1:58)

    Altogether an intellectual smorgasbord...

    The R4 version of this disc is missing

• fullscreen presentation on the flip side

    The R1 version of this disc is missing:

• various soundtrack and subtitle languages

    Reviews of the R1 disc make it sound as though the two versions have equivalent transfers. Unless you have a burning desire for a fullscreen version you can buy the R4 and save money.

    So I Married An Axe Murderer is a bit of Mike Myers self-indulgence. Mildly entertaining, on a good DVD.

    The video quality is rather good - just beware if you have a Pioneer player.

    The audio quality is adequate.

    The extras are basic.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall