‘Weird Al’ Yankovic is a certified one-man comedy institution. His career has lasted almost half a century, only one year less than Saturday Night Live, and shows no signs of slowing down. His popularity has ebbed and flowed, but he’s achieved periods of success throughout his career, with his latest album, Mandatory Fun, being his first to hit number one on the Billboard charts. While most of his notoriety comes from his music and the connected videos, he’s also proven his skills as an actor, writer, and talk show band leader on Comedy Bang! Bang!.

Despite his dominance over the parody song landscape, Yankvovic’s film and television endeavors have been less successful. While both are now considered cult classics, his movie UHF (1989), and his CBS series, The Weird Al Show (1997), failed critically and commercially upon release. Thankfully, whether it’s due to UHF finally getting the audience it deserves or his recent sales milestone, Hollywood has finally given Al another chance to make a movie after 33 years.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story recently dropped on The Roku Channel to positive reviews, a nice change of pace from how UHF was initially received. However, does that mean that the newer film is funnier? Both movies are thoroughly entertaining, but let’s compare the two to see and highlight why we need more ‘Weird Al’ movies.

UHF and Weird Have Memorable Styles

     The Roku Channel

One issue that arises when comparing UHF and Weird is that they have two very different approaches to comedy. UHF’s bare-bones plot mostly exists to loosely connect a bunch of unrelated sketches that parody movies and TV shows in style reminiscent of The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983). Weird, on the other hand, is a much more coherent satire of music biopics like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007).

The distinctions between the films have a lot to do with the eras they were made as well. UHF is an unending rapid-fire barrage of jokes like the Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker spoofs of the 1980s. Weird is neither slow nor serious, but in comparison to UHF, it takes more time to set up its jokes and waits until later in its runtime to go completely off the rails. UHF has more jokes overall, but Weird’s humor is more deliberate in its delivery. Whether one style is funnier than the other remains up to personal preference.

The Unforgettable Casts

At first glance, it seems like a fool’s errand even to attempt to argue that UHF has a better cast than Weird, which has an incredible core ensemble consisting of Daniel Radcliffe, Rainn Wilson, and Evan Rachel Wood, along with an absurd amount of cameos and side characters played by legends like Jack Black, Michael McKean, and Emo Philips and fan-favorites like Paul F. Tompkins, Scott Aukerman, and Jonah Ray.

However, a point could be made about quality over quantity. Michael Richards and Fran Drescher both give great, early career performances in UHF, and ‘Weird Al’ is a delight as the film’s lead. Weird’s cavalcade of talent is hard to beat, but UHF punches well above its weight in this category.

True Comedic Achievements

     Orion Pictures

While each film’s entire cast and crew should be lauded for their comedic achievements, both projects shine due to the writing. Despite some problematic content that has aged poorly, UHF’s bite-sized parodies hold up incredibly well today. Whether it’s the hilarious Rambo send-up or the wildly bloody saw demonstration, UHF is full of memorable scenes. Eric Appel and Yankovic also did a great job satirizing overly dramatic and self-congratulatory biopics while maintaining a level of self-awareness that never becomes annoyingly meta. While it takes the film a bit of time to truly let loose, the over-the-top third act is a ton of fun and cements Weird’s status as a future cult classic alongside UHF.

Despite his initial misfires, ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic has made two very funny movies over his career. While it took a while for the public to come around to UHF, its reappraisal happens to coincide with the release of his second funny feature. If Yankovic had more opportunities to make films, we could make a long list to rank them. Instead, the natural inclination is to compare the qualities of these two very different films that should be a part of a more extensive filmography.

Overall, due to the sheer quantity of jokes in UHF, it’s probably the funnier film, but Weird: The Al Yankovic Story works better as an overall piece. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait another three decades for an elderly Weird Al to release something that combines the best aspects of UHF and Weird.