UHF

Saw UHF (thanks, Chris!) It was a delightful comedy, helmed by Weird Al himself. He has this very childish but winning style of comedy. It's not overly clever, but it's so utterly guileless and honest I have a hard time leveling serious criticism at it. The humor is so personal and stupid (at one point, we're literally watching Michael Richards spin a toy soldier on a string) but it has its moments and as I say the whole thing is just so sweet. I thought the fake commercials were hilarious. (This one especially. Look at those legs sticking out of the ground!)

I didn't love the film (I like my comedy a shade darker) but it's too good for me to not like it. It's purposefully not manipulative. We are given little reason to like Weird Al's character: his TV shows are lowest-common-denominator style crassness, full of children shrieking and fast-talking voice-overs. He himself is not shown to be particularly clever or hard-working (by today's standards he doesn't "deserve" success.) Even his love-life is comically horrible (witness the funny/horrible voice mail he leaves his ex-girlfriend) but we do like him because that's the default that he's riffing off of. That's what we have to pretend to do, in some sense, to make the comedy work. That's clever enough for me enjoy, but not enough to really thrill me. I expect most normal people would like it pretty good okay though. It's very friendly.

PS - Bob the clown is played by David Bowe, not David Bowie as I very excitedly thought.