Director: Jay LeveyIt’s difficult write an unbiased review of what what my pre-teen mind perceived was the BEST MOVIE EVVVVAAAAARRRR after I recorded it off of a fuzzy TBS broadcast back in the days before them newfangled Dee-Vee-Dee. I forced everyone I knew (Distant mutated cousins, neighbors pets, poltergeist spirits) to listen to me re-quote scenes ad-verbatim till I ran out of saliva. UHF for a small portion of my life WAS my life. And the person you have to blame is writer/director/star/genius Weird Al Yanchovich.
Weird Al is down out of his luck and out of a job (again) His wacky gambler stereotypical uncle wins the deed to a pitsville UHF television station and decides to give the reigns to his Al, his nephew. Many unrelated TV/film parodies, a half hearted storyline about an evil rival station and Micheal Richards over-acting at 150% follow.
I hit play, sat back, and basked in the glow of…Hey…What the….It was a sinking heart that I realized that UHF, just, well, god, this is hard…It isn’t the guiding light for all comedy. The film itself is pretty slow and most of the jokes screech along painfully. Weird All yelped his high pitched voice again for ‘comedy effect’ and I smiled nervously in my friends direction. ‘It’s funny! I swear it’s funny!’. Lame gags piled over lame gags. The direction was workmanlike. Doom seemed assured.
And then I saw the “Spatula City” commercial. “There’s no better way to say ‘I Love you’ then the gift of Spatula.’
Light! At the end of the tunnel! Nuggets of hilarity like “Wheel of Fish”, “Raoul’s Animal Kingdom” and “Gandhi II” popped up on screen. I finally realized that I only remember parts of the film as great comedy because it succeeds a sketch compilation but fails as a narrative film. Weird Al as an actor is a one note screechy voiced wide eyed caricature and his shtick gets grating fast. Fran Dresher is his female wide eyed screechy companion. Michael Richard is off his rocker as expected. Everyone else hams it up and is quickly forgotten. It’s only the weirdness of the unrelated TV/Shows commercial that make this worrth your time at all...As difficult as that is to say.
Weird Al is down out of his luck and out of a job (again) His wacky gambler stereotypical uncle wins the deed to a pitsville UHF television station and decides to give the reigns to his Al, his nephew. Many unrelated TV/film parodies, a half hearted storyline about an evil rival station and Micheal Richards over-acting at 150% follow.
I hit play, sat back, and basked in the glow of…Hey…What the….It was a sinking heart that I realized that UHF, just, well, god, this is hard…It isn’t the guiding light for all comedy. The film itself is pretty slow and most of the jokes screech along painfully. Weird All yelped his high pitched voice again for ‘comedy effect’ and I smiled nervously in my friends direction. ‘It’s funny! I swear it’s funny!’. Lame gags piled over lame gags. The direction was workmanlike. Doom seemed assured.
And then I saw the “Spatula City” commercial. “There’s no better way to say ‘I Love you’ then the gift of Spatula.’
Light! At the end of the tunnel! Nuggets of hilarity like “Wheel of Fish”, “Raoul’s Animal Kingdom” and “Gandhi II” popped up on screen. I finally realized that I only remember parts of the film as great comedy because it succeeds a sketch compilation but fails as a narrative film. Weird Al as an actor is a one note screechy voiced wide eyed caricature and his shtick gets grating fast. Fran Dresher is his female wide eyed screechy companion. Michael Richard is off his rocker as expected. Everyone else hams it up and is quickly forgotten. It’s only the weirdness of the unrelated TV/Shows commercial that make this worrth your time at all...As difficult as that is to say.
DVD
Weird Al sums up the tone of the DVD Special Features perfectly in the commentary “Ugh! What the hell where we thinking?” Self Deprecating from start to finish the special features that adorn this disc are exactly the way people should approach past work. The picture quality and sound presentation is all right, nothing spectacular, but it was never a high budget film in the first place so I don’t expect the heavens.
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