“Right now I'd like to show you one of my favorite cartoons. It's a sad, depressing story about a pathetic coyote who spends every waking moment of his life in the futile pursuit of a sadistic roadrunner who MOCKS him and LAUGHS at him as he's repeatedly CRUSHED and MAIMED! Hope you ENJOY IT!!!”
Let’s talk about ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic—basically the undisputed master of the parody song since about the seventies. What makes Yankovic so timeless is not just his ability to mimic anyone from James Brown to Kurt Cobain, but in many ways, to actually improve on the catchiness of many a track—I can probably bring to mind more of his lyrics on his take on ‘Bad’ than I can the actual song. So, given that by a young age he had already established his credentials in creative spoofery and music videos, that’d make him a good fit for a feature, right?
As it turns out…sort of. UHF here, directed by James Levey, is all about, well, UHF—Ultra High Frequency television stations were a common fixture across the US in the good ol’ analogue age, although with that Americentric angle the title here got rendered as ‘The Vidiot’ in many a state. I do appreciate that at least on some level, there that affectionate nod to the random weirdness that came with public access and more, which is a bygone age succeeded in many ways by Youtube and all manner of online videos.
The plot? Well, such as it is, involves Al as a rather inattentive oddball called George, bouncing from job to job until he lands at a failing UHF station. His attempts to shore up its programming with random kids shows like any other local show fail until he hits upon the idea of recruiting fellow weirdos to create the most off-the-wall programming possible. Among these are the janitor Stanley, played by Michael Richards—and much like the actual Michael Richards, Stanley appears to have quite a few screws loose, not necessarily in a way that’s all that funny. He’s honestly one of the weaker parts of the film, even if he does have one amusing monologue calling back to a particular favorite seventies flick of mine.
But where the film does shine is the same thing Weird Al was good at in his music videos—those split-second gags that strike you in the face with the most off-kilter lunacy possible and quickly move on to the next before you can process it. We’ve got Gorbachev mud wrestling, spatula cities, Al Capone’s glove compartment, and more—as a barrage of high-quality nonsense, this is where the best chuckles are. There’s of course the movie parodies, including the infamous one of Gandhi—done in a way that might not pass now, but also does aptly sum up Hollywoodification of many such figures!
Then after that we have to get back to the plot, which feels like something the film just goes through grudgingly so it can tie the gags and parodies together. There’s something about an evil tycoon (Kevin McCarthy) who wants to buy the station for some demented reason and while he hams up the role the best he can it’s just kind of there…as well as the usual stuff about the girlfriend George needs to win over (Victoria Jackson) that feels like more checklists to tick off…and you kinda just want to go back to whatever silliness Al could pull from the back of his skull!
So, where does that leave this ‘un? It’s kind of all over the place, but if surreal humor is your thing, this one’s got enough to warrant a one-off watch—just don’t bother if you want a solid storyline to tie it all together. The film flopped on release and Al mostly stuck to music from there on out, but at the same time, there are enough memorable moments that still get homaged once in a while now that do show that there was a little bit of his id making it to the big screen here. If you like the sound of that, adjust the aerial and give it a try…
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