One thing I have noticed is that the past two reviews have been about some much darker content than most movies. On top of that, yesterday I wrote the majority of a possible review to be posted in the future which studied the nether sections of humanity. It is time for a break. Time for the light and the fluffy. We all need to look at life on surface level at times, especially if we find our minds naturally gravitate to wanting to dig deeper and deeper. After a very anxious day at work, I ate some sushi with my wife and some friends and was blessed to find that the waiter declared we were celebrating an anniversary today (he never told us which anniversary we were celebrating, maybe the fact that he has been in Brantford for a week now) and everything was 35% off. Sold, my good man.
Around fifteen years ago, I suffered a large bursting of my bubble. I had grown up believing that the movie Men at Work was the absolute height of brilliant comedy. I do not know why, but this film was perceived by me as genius from opening to closing credits. I had one night convinced friends of mine that Men at Work was the movie we needed to see, and as we gathered around a television in a typical guy way (greasy food was in hand, and somehow underfoot... that's just how young bachelors live) where I was slaughtered by what I saw, left to wonder if everything that I had once held as funny in my younger years would fall apart just as this movie about two garbage men.
This was my own personal torment when viewing UHF for review. There is no shortage of fond memories from this film, many quotable moments that my friends and I shared, and I was very concerned that it may be another Men at Work experience. Sadly, I was right in having that worry. I know a great many people who still delight in this film, but I have to say that I honestly did not enjoy it nearly as much as I wanted to, for the sake of the legend held by young Scott.
The plot is simple enough... Weird Al Yankovic gets to run a TV station. The station is going to be sold and it has a small time frame to make the money to stay in operation. It is quite formulaic, but I think that was quite fine. This is actually the best possible story line for a movie with Weird Al, because the different TV shows and commercials all are a blackboard for the insane, chaotic, and completely random comedy style of Yankovic. I found the best parts of the movie that still hold up are the little snippets of shows such as Wheel of Fish, and commercials for Spatula City (what better way to say 'I love you' than with the gift of a spatula?). The plot was absolutely perfect for what the movie was, and I say good job to them on selecting it.
Where the movie disappointed was basically all the points in between those small bits of brilliance that were scattered here and there throughout the film. All of the jokes that I remember having an appreciation for seemed to fall flat for me now. Perhaps that means I am growing up? I did cultivate a chest hair the other day, so anything is possible. I do like silly humour at times (evidenced by my great enjoyment of some sections of this film), but there seemed to be a lacking energy in most spots, and a lot felt like filler.
As far as the acting goes, it seemed to be falling in the same cadence as the humour. It seemed to just exist at times, but it also really fell into place at other times. I think that's what left me the most frustrated, to know that there seemed to be a bit more potential for this movie, but that too many scenes may just have been deemed 'good enough.'
There may be people out there who will defend this cult classic to the bitter end, and I really wanted to be one of those people. I so wanted to enjoy this movie and give it high praise, but I am left going the other direction. Even though I am giving it a low score, it is one of those movies that has such a personality and charm of its own that I completely understand the connection some folks have with it. Many people will watch it and still have so many great things to say and fun things to take away, but for me, I am like Phyllis Weaver on Wheel of Fish... I got nothing.
(I do understand the irony in me saying that I got 'nothing' from the movie as a take away, but affectionately using a quote from the movie to do so. I suppose that's just the nature of the beast.)
Rating - 1.5 out of 4 stars
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About Me
- Scott Martin
- I'm smarter than a bat. I know this because I caught the little jerk bat that got in my apartment, before immediately and inadvertently bringing him back in. So maybe I'm not smarter than a bat.
I actually think your panning of this film was far too kind. It is two pictures sloppily pasted into one: a poorly written and rather ridiculous tale of a minor station trying to gain massive ratings without even one trace of how the industry works; and the other story is just a collection of parody sketches that may be fun to quote but are never able to mine any laughs and work better as a guessing game for what film or show it is based on. Poor Weird Al may be one of the worse leads of all time, and yes, I remember Pauly Shore. I hate this movie, and have a slightly used Jokes for Toddler Who Were Dropped Far Too Often book for anyone who loves it.
ReplyDeleteHaha! Perhaps I was being too kind, but I think that came from a place of happy nostalgia that I had for this film. It was the fond, old memories that I had that stayed my hand when I wrote this. Perhaps I felt like it would be like betraying an old friend who turned out to be a thief after many years of loyalty. But then again, it was a pretty crumby film...
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