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I'm not a Mike Myers fan; I'm almost entirely indifferent to him. However, for more than a decade I have had a weird obsession with Canada, which I blame on Due South (and a little on Rodney McKay). Like Douglas Coupland's Souvenir From Canada books, Mike Myers' memoir serves up a healthy (ketchup-flavored) helping of what makes Canada -- especially Canada of the '60s-'90s -- so unique and strange and special. Just with a lot more biographical detail. Which, to my surprise, I found fairly fascinating as well -- Myers makes the smart choice to write much more extensively about his early creative struggles than his later financial successes. (I'm not sure how creatively successful much of his later work has been...sorry, Mike.) That's always the much more interesting part. (Although I did laugh at the story about the fan who hounds him all the way into the bathroom when he's in the middle of a major bowel disfunction, because sometimes I am 12.)
That said, this book could have easily been improved by a more rigorous edit. Some of the anecdotes are simply out of order: for example, we hear about Myers doing "more commercials" before we hear how he got into acting in the first place. It was jarring -- with such an easy potential fix! I am, of course, deeply offended on a professional level.
So I feel sort of weird giving this book four stars -- it's not a masterpiece by any means, and it's super insular...but I genuinely got a great deal of enjoyment out of reading it in two highly pleasurable sittings. It's oddly...sweet. Mike Myers just really loves the Maple Leafs and the Trudeaus, you guys. As long as I never have to see a single frame of that Cat in the Hat abomination ever again, he's all right by me.
That said, this book could have easily been improved by a more rigorous edit. Some of the anecdotes are simply out of order: for example, we hear about Myers doing "more commercials" before we hear how he got into acting in the first place. It was jarring -- with such an easy potential fix! I am, of course, deeply offended on a professional level.
So I feel sort of weird giving this book four stars -- it's not a masterpiece by any means, and it's super insular...but I genuinely got a great deal of enjoyment out of reading it in two highly pleasurable sittings. It's oddly...sweet. Mike Myers just really loves the Maple Leafs and the Trudeaus, you guys. As long as I never have to see a single frame of that Cat in the Hat abomination ever again, he's all right by me.