Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.

It’s finally here, a collection of every Weird Al music video ever made, as far as I’m aware at any rate. I’m sure I don’t even need to recommend this to the serious Al fans, but you may be curious as to what all you get in the package. Be patient for a moment; in the spirit of drawing new Al-coholics into the fold allow me to state some obvious information.

For any readers that are not familiar with Weird Al (though most people half-way familiar with American culture have heard of him) he’s a comedian that’s most famous for his parodies of popular songs and styles associated with particular bands. His humor ranges from witty to silly, and everyone wonders what he’s going to do next.
Bands have been known to say they felt like they have “made it” in the industry when Al has parodied their song. His talented band plays the music so well it’s sometimes better than the original, and the artists themselves sometimes take part.
He has done themes for 3 movies (including his own) and loves to sing about food and entertainment (such as singing the plots to Star Wars, Forest Gump, and others). His videos follow that trend. The video parodies are often as close to the originals as the songs are. In fact, he quite often uses the same locations and/or people as the original videos. I’ll give you a brief description of each video shortly, but you will appreciate that more if you have heard some of the music already. Check out some samples on line somewhere if your interest has been piqued. It should go without saying that if the songs get on your nerves you’re going to get, at best, minimal enjoyment out of the videos.

One thing you may get confused about is the DVD version. There are 2 Weird Al video collections released though the earlier one has gone out of print. I’ve never seen the earlier one myself, but here are the distinctions I know of. The covers are different with 1 being a green bordered picture of Al and 2 being Al against a more colorful background of small video screenshots. The second one is the ULTIMATE video collection and is the one I’m discussing. This one offers more videos (specifically Running With Scissors and Poodle Hat videos) and a few extras. In other words, the Ultimate version is more bang for your buck and more complete not to mention easier to find.
Here’s the track listing. I think the original collection was in chronological order whereas the Ultimate collection isn’t. There may be a pattern I’m not aware of, but it looks almost random with the exceptions of a couple that tie in such as You Don’t Love Me Anymore following Smells Like Nirvana.

Fat (Bad – Michael Jackson) a great recreation of the original with a fairly impressive fat suit on Al. One of his funniest.

Amish Paradise (Gangsta’s Paradise – Coolio) some great Amish gags dealing with barn raisings, porn, and anger. See Al singing in reverse… reversed! Florence Henderson makes an appearance.

It’s All About The Pentiums (It’s All About The Benjamins – Puff Daddy) Flashy and colorful, but with fewer clever gags than I’d hoped for. This is my favorite Al song, but not my favorite video. Emo Philips and Drew Carey make appearances.

Smells Like Nirvana (Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana) Incredibly and insanely funny. This is possibly his most highly acclaimed video and for good reason. On top of being a great song the video is a non-stop laugh riot. Dick Van Patten makes a side-splitting appearance as does the janitor from the Nirvana video.

You Don’t Love Me Anymore - though the songs are not related other than being on the same album, the video is kind of a sequel to Smells Like Nirvana. The intro picks up with the band taking off wigs and such, and the janitor is still around. Though the images have nothing to do with the words in the song, there’s some funny if sometimes gruesome stuff. Robert Goulet plays the piano and gets maimed.

Bedrock Anthem (Under The Bridge and Give It Away – Red Hot Chili Peppers) Crazy funny. Lots of Flintstones images and gags related to the show and the original Chili Peppers video. Dick Van Patten makes another cameo.

Gump (Lump – Presidents Of The United States Of America) Funny Forest Gump recreations with Andy Comeau in the lead role and Pat Boone as the greedy guy on the bench. It’s a mix of the movie and the original Lump video. Loads of fun, more so than the movie he sings about.

Jurassic Park (MacArthur Park – Richard Harris) a claymation video putting Al in the middle of the movie. It’s especially funny if you love Jurassic Park the movie and hate Barney the dinosaur. The animation is pretty impressive.

Headline News (Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm – Crash Test Dummies) I haven’t seen the original video, but I figure the concept is based on it. The song tells about 3 people: the guy who got caned in Singapore, Tonya Harding, and John Bobbit the castrated. Al recreates the incidents to mach the lyrics, and a crowd watches as if it’s a play being performed on stage. Even if you’re not much of an Al fan, this one is great for its social commentary. The camera focuses on several guys in the audience after Bobbitt’s predicament is revealed and their facial expressions are just about the funniest thing on the whole DVD. Judy Tenuta plays Lorena Bobbitt. I can’t confirm this officially, but I’m sure I also saw Musical Mike Kieffer, the hand musician, and Dr. Demento in his trademark top hat.

Dare To Be Stupid is every bit as silly as the song. There are some funny gags, but you really have to like the ridiculous side of Al to appreciate this one.

Eat It (Beat It – Michael Jackson) It’s pretty well done corny fun even if it’s not as funny as some of the others. Jackson fans will appreciate it the most.

Like A Surgeon (Like A Virgin – Madonna) Al as Madonna traipses around a hospital. Lots of great medical gags and Madonna related silliness.

UHF parodies more bands in a single video than any other plus clips from the movie. Guns N Roses, Randy Newman, the Beatles, INXS, Billy Idol, Prince, and several others are portrayed. This is also included on the UHF movie DVD.

Money For Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies (Dire Straits plus whoever sang the Hillbillies theme song) Combines the original music video with Berverly Hillbillies clips and animation of Al and Jed. It includes a lead in from the UHF movie in which the video is shown in its entirety.

One More Minute is a funny song but a slow video. There are too few gags compared to most of the others.

I Lost On Jeopardy (Jeopardy – Greg Kihn) It’s like watching a game show! No, seriously! Art Fleming, the original host, and Don Pardo, the original announcer open the video as if a real game of Jeopardy is about to be played. The music kicks in and Al sings from his podium as the game progresses. Greg Kihn also makes a cameo. I like the video more than the song even if it’s dated.

This Is The Life is the theme for Johnny Dangerously. Clips from the movie, most featuring Michael Keaton, are interspersed with Al acting out the part of a rich snob. Another video I like more than the song.

Living With A Hernia (Living In America – James Brown) Very much in keeping with the style of James. Probably the funniest of Al’s early videos mixed with plenty of Vegas style flash.

Spy Hard is the opening theme for Spy Hard. The video doesn’t feature any of the titles used in the movie version; it’s just Al against the background of swimming female silhouettes, James Bond style. There’s still some funny stuff, but it’s not his best.

Ricky (Mickey – Toni Basil) Funny if dated. Said to be the first comedy video shown on MTV. Al plays Ricky with Tress MacNeille (voice actress for Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Simpsons, and Futurama) as Lucy. They are thrown into the I Love Lucy world while they sing. Dr. Demento makes a cameo.

Christmas At Ground Zero is mostly Cold War-era stock footage. It’s funny in concept, but the result is my least favorite video. I usually skip this one on the CD and the DVD.

I Love Rocky Road (I Love Rock & Roll – Joan Jett And The Blackhearts) obviously low budget, but fun nonetheless. There are some pretty good gags here and there. Musical Mike Kieffer plays his hands on screen.

Bob is the only video from the new album, Poodle Hat. It’s simple and low budget but parodies Bob Dylan as much as the song itself does. Al holds cue cards that he drops in time with the lyrics writing out each palindrome for you to read.

The Saga Begins (American Pie – Don McLean) Having never seen the original video I don’t know how much of Al’s is a direct parody. Mostly it has to do with Star Wars, but whereas in Bedrock Anthem and MFN/Beverly Hillbillies used images from the shows, the closest thing we get to a true Star Wars image is a wallet-sized head-shot of Jake Lloyd. The video is surprisingly slow with few gags, disappointing to a Star Wars geek like myself. If the aliens had looked more like authentic Star Wars aliens, or if more Force-related gags had been used I would probably think more highly of it. There is a pretty decent clone gag at the end, though.

There, so now you know about the videos. Most are quite funny though a few are good to have only for the sake of completion. Quality varies since the videos range from the early 80’s to new millennium. The older ones can be grainy though the audio sounds great. The newer ones look cleaner and the audio sounds even better. You have a choice between stereo and 5.1 surround though I really don’t know how you’re going to get a 5.1 effect out of most of this. It all sounds very good.

The case is plastic. I described the cover art earlier; the back has a track listing. There’s an insert with the tracks listed again along with the dates they were made, director, and other notes. I love the inclusion of the information, I only wish there were a few more images to go with it.

The menus have some imagination behind them which is good, but I kind of expected something as impressive as UHF. They do have some animation, sound effects, and original images. Every screen has its own music bed using instrumental versions of original Al songs different from any used in the videos. Fun Zone was already an instrumental on the UHF soundtrack so of course that one is used as well.

The extras are too few and a bit of a let-down. The sleeve says something about pop-up lyrics playing with the music. Yeah, that’s kind of neat to see the words while Al sings, it’s just that other releases tend to call that “English captions.” The description makes it sound like it’s going to be something creative (especially if you saw how they did it on the Poodle Hat CD-ROM) when it’s just standard captions.

The photo gallery is one of the best features. Whereas too many releases give half the screen over to frame graphics, the photos here are full-screen. There are some great images, and I would have stayed entertained if they had included twice the number of pictures. I would have enjoyed some captions with Al’s comments and some scans of the various video collections through the years. I enjoyed what is here, but again, the UHF DVD galleries are better.

There’s a Tomorrow Show segment that’s pretty good. The host introduces Al offering up a few good laughs in the course of it. Al along with drummer Jon plays Another One Rides The Bus. Jon’s drum set is the most interesting you’ll likely ever see; it’s like an old, large suitcase or a small trunk with various squeeze-bulb horns and such attached to it & wind instruments like whistles attached to him.

A collage of clips from the Weird Al Show: includes the full opening title sequence followed by 3 video clips. This one confuses me a little. Did Al make a video for Living In The Fridge or did he just make part of one? It’s evil to tease us like that, I want to see the whole thing. Even if there’s not a complete video that could have been included, there should have been more extensive footage from the show.

My Bologna Live is found by highlighting the Weird Al Show icon and pressing up on the keypad. It’s Al solo on the accordion. There’s not much to it and the sound is pretty bad. It makes for a good Easter Egg since only the die hard fans will care about it.

It’s best to decide if you like Al’s music before you start looking into a video collection. Al’s fans should need little prodding to decide on a purchase here. I don’t know of any fan that doesn’t love the videos which means that having unlimited access to them is exciting. This set would have gotten a 5* rating except that my expectations for menu creativity had been raised by UHF, reading about the lyrics as an extra for it to turn out to be standard subtitles was a disappointment, the Weird Al Show clips collage is little more than a tease, and there are so few extras in general. Videos for Couch Potato or Trash Day off the Poodle Hat album would have been a plus. Still, it gets 4 stars and is a great, even necessary, addition to my Weird Al collection.


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12