The year is 2014. Germany has just won the World Cup. A massive hole recently appeared seemingly out of nowhere in Serbia. For some reason, The Purge got a sequel.
But the world has no time for any of that during this particularly humid summer. That's because we're all too busy being swept up in Weird Al fever.
Thirty-five years ago the world was introduced to a legend with long curls, a small mustache, and an accordion. Weird Al's first parody song, My Bologna (a take on The Knack's My Sharona) was goofy, brilliant, and... weird. Since then he's released fourteen studio albums and a movie in 1989, one that went mostly unseen and remains today an underrated comedic gem.
For the time being this is about that movie, not his brand new album (which is called Mandatory Fun and you should totally buy it right now). The film in question is, of course, UHF. UHF stars our hero Weird Al Yankovic as George Newman, a day-dreaming job-drifter who thinks he's made it big once his uncle lets him work at a local UHF station, Channel 62. Newman hires a pre-Seinfeld Michael Richards to be the studio's janitor, but he quickly becomes the star of Channel 62 when Newman lets him host one of the kid shows.
The movie is filled with parodies, from the opening Raiders of the Lost Ark segment, to a show called "Conan the Librarian," and about a hundred others between. These absurd parodies were more akin to those of Airplane or The Naked Gun, and not of the unwatchable atrocities spewed by modern filmmakers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. UHF existed in a time when parody films were actually, you know, funny. They were hilarious, oftentimes brilliant, and even surprisingly charming. At the risk of giving off a "le wrong generation" vibe, parody films were quite simply a hell of a lot better back then.
Unfortunately, though, UHF basically bombed. But isn't that the Cinderella story of all classic cult films? Didn't Mallrats leave critics unimpressed despite later being regarded as a total necessity to Kevin Smith's View-Askewniverse? Didn't it take the world a good decade or so to appreciate the brilliance of Office Space? The ideal catalyst for a cult classic is initial failure - and that is most definitely the case for UHF.
Watching the film 25 years later one can easily see why it didn't hit the proverbial ball out of the park. The parodies, funny as they may be, seem to be scattered almost incoherently, or not really essential to the plot at all. One can argue that disastrous parody flicks like Disaster Movie or anything by the aforementioned Friedberg and Seltzer follow a similar formula: throwing around any random parody simply for the sake of doing so. What makes UHF different from those movies is that UHF actually has likeable and consistent characters, an underlying plot that remains for the most part steady and stable, and some genuinely hilarious scenes. Yes, several jokes fall flat. Yes, one or two may even feel just a tad unnerving. And no, it isn't as good as Airplane. But overall, UHF is a movie we should be happy exists. It doesn't do anything groundbreaking, it doesn't set a certain standard for parody films, but that doesn't stop it from being an enjoyable flick starring everyone's favorite polka-man, Weird Al. And did I mention Michael Richards is in it? I did mention that. That's just one of the many reasons you should watch UHF.
When I was fourteen all I listened to was Outkast and Weird Al. An unusual mix, sure, but I was fourteen and unaware of the variety of music that existed all around me. Limewire was a thing and I brought a portable CD player with me for the bus ride to school. Every time the bus so much as hit a bump or a pothole or a pebble, the CD would skip. And when you're trying to listen to Amish Paradise or The Alternative Polka, that can get a little frustrating.
I remember how kids reacted when they asked what I was listening to and I told them, reluctantly because I already hated them, "Weird Al..." They laughed. But it wasn't a "Haha I love Weird Al, too!" so much as a "Haha you fuckin' faggot!" Actually, I think they even added that exact phrase. This is because throughout the nineties and at least the early aughties, despite his massive presence a lot of people just didn't like Weird Al. Why? Because he's different, and we're a generation that was raised to believe that being different is good so long as it's not too different. Al Yankovic was too different. Had he existed several decades prior, he would've been labeled a communist and probably lobotomized.
Last week Weird Al released his new album, which I already told you is called Mandatory Fun, and you should have already listened to while reading all that bullshit between then and now. It gives me hope and just a little bit of faith in humanity to see that many people are not only accepting the craziness of Weird Al, but embracing his wild, accordion-soaked tunes and loving every second of it. It has been thirty-five years since the man started releasing cleverly-written parody songs and his time has finally come. Sure, folks like me have loved Weird Al in the past, but this year just feels different. It doesn't feel like a triumphant return so much as a way-overdue emergence into the mainstream. A triumphant albeit delayed worldwide acceptance. This is the long-awaited and much deserved Year of the Al. The Yeird, if you will. Summer 2014 belongs to Mandatory Fun and the artist who made it possible (along with the parodied-artists who obviously made the parodies possible).
And for all of us weird kids out there, that's something to be proud of.
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