Leave it to musical parody genius "Weird Al" Yankovic to come up with this wildly crazy and funny send-up. Yankovic is George Newman, a likable enough guy who just hasn't quite gotten his act together. Then out of the blue he and bud David Bowe are given the chance to turn around a low-rent local TV station. Humorously (and predictably) the ratings go through the roof with odd creations like "Conan the Librarian", "Raul's Wild Kingdom" and "Stanley Spadowski's Playhouse", the latter complete with a pre-Seinfeld Michael Richards playing a Kramer-like goofball.
Yankovic is terrific in this, his starring debut, and shows a natural knack for a wide range of comedy that he should really bring to the big screen more often. The film is ripe with memorable parodies and great visuals (Richards pulls a foot-long booger from his nose and Yankovic is flattened into a pancake during a RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK parody). Some of the humor is stupid, like the sight of Conan the Librarian chopping an overdue-book holder in half; while some of it you may have to watch twice to catch or fully appreciate.
In a lot of ways, UHF is like one of Yankovic's songs. You can watch it time and time again and still laugh, even if you're not always sure why.
Yankovic is terrific in this, his starring debut, and shows a natural knack for a wide range of comedy that he should really bring to the big screen more often. The film is ripe with memorable parodies and great visuals (Richards pulls a foot-long booger from his nose and Yankovic is flattened into a pancake during a RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK parody). Some of the humor is stupid, like the sight of Conan the Librarian chopping an overdue-book holder in half; while some of it you may have to watch twice to catch or fully appreciate.
In a lot of ways, UHF is like one of Yankovic's songs. You can watch it time and time again and still laugh, even if you're not always sure why.