Mike Myers' New Netflix Show (Was Inspired By His Biggest Flop)

Mike Myers is back with a new Netflix series, The Pentavarate, starring Mike Myers, Mike Myers, plus, and this will come as a shock to literally no one, Mike Myers. Presumably, the goofy wig and funny glasses industry really took a hit while Myers was out of the game.

The show, about an Illuminati-esque secret society, hasn’t been getting great reviews, but the oddest part of this show may be its source material: 1993’s So I Married an Axe Murderer – specifically a brief scene in which Mike Myers’ character’s dad (also played by Myers) rambles incoherently about a crazy conspiracy theory involving Col. Sanders and the Queen.

This is weird for a number of reasons; first of all, while some publications are describing The Pentavarate as a “spin-off” of the nearly 30-year-old movie, this seems slightly misleading. It’s really just expanding on that one gag that seemingly burnt through its entire comic potential in like 30 seconds. This would be like if Adam Sandler crafted an entire streaming service based entirely on some nonsense his grandma briefly said in Happy Gilmore. 

Also, this is supposed to be Myers’ big comeback project. Why would he use a movie that notoriously flopped at the box office as a narrative start point? Well, to be fair, So I Married an Axe Murderer is actually a good movie, worth watching for Phil Hartman’s role as Vicky the Park Ranger alone. 

But the two projects are wildly different in tone; The Pentavarate is a broad farce in the mode of Austin Powers and (*shudder*) The Love Guru, while So I Married An Axe Murderer is a far more grounded comedic riff on Hitchcock. So really, looking back to that movie for inspiration isn’t necessarily a bad idea for Myers – but frustratingly, he took the dumbest possible part of the film to expand upon, instead of mining what actually made it a solid cult comedy, regardless of its paltry box office take.  

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Top Image: Netflix