Synopsis
The eccentric new manager of a UHF television channel tries to save the station from financial ruin with an odd array of programming.
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Cast
- 'Weird Al' YankovicGeorge Newman
- Kevin McCarthyR.J. Fletcher
- Michael RichardsStanley Spadowski
- David BoweBob
- Stanley BrockHarvey Bilchik
- Anthony GearyPhilo
- Trinidad SilvaRaul Hernandez
- Gedde WatanabeKuni
- Billy BartyNoodles MacIntosh
- John ParagonRichard Fletcher
Recommendations
- 75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The laughs just keep rolling as 'Weird Al' makes a movie. Overheard from a still-convulsing woman after a recent screening of Weird Al Yankovic's UHF: "I'm sorry, but that's funny." I'm sorry, but she's right. Yuks you feel obliged to apologize for are yuks nonetheless. And UHF prompts a lot of apologies. - 70
The New York Times
The movie is forever digressing so that Mr. Yankovic can offer media spoofs that have only the most tangential relation to the story. [22 Jul 1989, p.1.15] - 63
TV Guide Magazine
Yankovic fails to come up with anything new to freshen the stock storyline, and is content instead to let it serve as a creaky showcase for his forte, media parodies. But even the quality of these parodies is inconsistent, with the movie and music takeoffs being obvious and out of date. - 50
Washington Post
UHF is not a uniformly funny experience, unless you have to wear a bib and tend to laugh at anything, such as sudden gusts of wind. Yankovic, co-writing with manager Jay Levey (who also directed), goes for gag after gag. Some hit, some miss. You laugh, you cry. - 40
Chicago Reader
Gamely running through parodies of TV commercials and shows, not to mention Spielberg, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Selznick, and Gandhi, the movie proves to be awful by any standards--feeble, corny, and labored in script as well as direction--although the Capracorn of the basic premise occasionally manages to convey a certain sweetness. - 40
Wall Street Journal
UHF, a parody of trash television, is almost defiantly silly, but when it's funny it is very funny. This sloppy, good-natured satire certainly doesn't threaten "Network's" status as the classic decimation of the television business. [27 Jul 1989, p.1] - 25
Chicago Sun-Times
The result is a very unfunny movie. It's routine, predictable, and dumb - real dumb. - 20
Los Angeles Times
The problem with UHF is that everything in it is a parody. The only logic for anything that happens is that there's some new thing to make fun of-mostly inanely. It's not much of a movie. [21 Jul 1989 p.11]
