Retro Review: UHF -Reviewed by Chris

This is one of the reviews I most looked forward to doing since we discussed starting a film blog. It perfectly captures the imagination of world renowned parody man “Weird Al” Yankovic, who directed and starred in the film.

Synopsis: George Newman (Weird Al) can’t manage to keep a steady job due to his overactive imagination. Not even Burger joints will keep him. However, his uncle manages to win a tv station in a game of cards (one which, as he puts it “more people watch the fish tank down at Leo’s Pet Store”) and the adventure ensues. Together with his friend Bob (David Bowe (No, not David Bowie the singer/ dancing  king of the goblins, just David Bowe, who’ve you likely never heard of before)) they set to work to get the place up and running. To his surprise, this job seems to be falling apart like all the rest until a quirky janitor named Stanly Spadowski (Michael Richards) manages to get them ratings. From there George uses his imagination to come up with tons of new shows (such as “Wheel of Fish” and “Raul’s Wild Kingdom”) that capture the hearts of the local television audience. Everyone is full of television induced euphoria, everyone except the owner of Channel 8 who has sworn revenge on the new station for stealing its viewers.

While there is an occasional bit of language or adult humor moments, most of this movie is good clean fun. This is a rare occurrence, looking at a lot of our modern comedies that are driven by profanity, sex, drugs and alcohol jokes. Also, I feel many of us can relate to George in his struggle to find his calling in life, giving it a personal touch. The plot does flow well despite the fact the parody style comedy tends to be really all over the place.  The biggest problem I’d say is that the lighting in certain scenes is terrible. They actually cleaned it up well for the DVD but if you have the older version it can really be a pain. Overall a great movie with an excellent cast and consistent laughs.Since I really don’t want to give away any of the story beyond that I’ll leave you with a clip of Stanley giving his take on life.