Review of UHF (1989) by Joseph O — 29 Sep 2017

I've always loved Weird Al, not just his witty well-written song parodies, but his demeanor and sense of humour I find very easy to enjoy, so after years of loving Yankovic's content, I decided to give this movie a shot.

I don't know, I'm still extremely uncomfortable seeing Michael Richards IN ANYTHING (I'm not a big Seinfeld guy) after knowing about the blantant unnecessary racist slurs he let out during one of his comedy shows, and in this movie he plays the comic relief, the janitor, who, after being fired by the television company's owner, is invited to work for Al's channel, where he becomes the star of the show. But my main problem with him is that he's dumb. Too dumb. His whole character is just one big joke that he's dumb. I get this movie wasn't too ambitious, but it's just cringey for the movie to focus on this inside joke throughout the film so heavily.

I thought Yankovic was pretty funny at some parts, and although there is enough heart and humour to at least get you to the end of the movie quickly, I felt let down, even though I knew I shouldn't expect much from the beginning. I thought it would be a campy cult classic with lots of dry humour that is just the right amount of stupid to get it from being critically acclaimed.

Still, the ending is pretty fucking satisfying. They did a really good job as making the movie's antagonist an absolute loathsome, miserable fuck that, for all the filler and unnecessary 'har har Stanley's dumb' humour you have to sit through to get to it, it felt worth it in the end. Kinda.