Ever wonder how the most famous parody songwriter got his start? You won’t find the answer in Eric Appel’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth taking a walk on the wacky side.

Inspired by a fake trailer (think 2011’s Hobo with a Shotgun) Appel produced in 2010, positive reception led him and Yankovic to collaborate on a feature-length biopic. “Biopic,” of course, is used extremely loosely. The only semblance you’ll find of the artist is his hair, humor and accordion.

Weird isn’t a pioneer in satirical, musical biopics. Jake Kasdan did it back in 2007 with Walk Hard — just two years after the genre’s archetypal flick, Walk the Line. While Kasdan’s take pokes at the template to a T, Weird does away with that tomfoolery. Or rather, it does away with everything but the tomfoolery.

Al (Daniel Radcliffe) dreams of making beloved songs “better” by rewriting the lyrics, much to the frustration of his cookie-cutter parents (Toby Huss and Julianne Nicholson). After rejecting his dad’s demands to work at a factory that makes something, Al’s mentored by his childhood hero, Dr. Demento (The Office’s Rainn Wilson). And then he dates Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood).

Following in the steps of Weird Al’s first movie, 1989’s UHF, the gags are relentless. Radcliffe is a natural to physical comedy, at times taking more of a beating than he did in Swiss Army Man. This is especially evident in his lip-synced performance of “Like a Surgeon,” complete with two muscle-bound dancers struggling to dance with Madonna-inspired cone bras.

And though Weird doesn’t make even the slightest effort to portray Yankovic’s tale, it doesn’t need to. Instead, it’s a showcase of his greatest hits, each paired with their own secret history. The backstories of “Eat It” and “Amish Paradise” are zany, outlandish and even touching. Thankfully, “White and Nerdy” is nowhere to be heard.

Anyone who wants to actually learn something about artist’s career are better off reading Nathan Rabin’s Weird Al: The Book. But if you want to experience what Yankovic intended — to laugh your ass off — it’s hard to go wrong with Weird. —Daniel Bokemper

Being shot in suburban Illinois, One More Saturday Night looks like it could take place one or two neighborhoods over from the shenanigans of John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles. The teen comedy could pass as an alternate-reality version, as it has direct counterparts for the Anthony Michael Hall and Justin Henry roles of, respectively, the geek aching to act cool and a precocious little brother. If only it thought to copy the laughs.

Produced in part by Dan Aykroyd, this unofficial Saturday Night Live movie marks the first — and last — big-screen vehicle for the legendary SNL writing/performing team of Al Franken and Tom Davis. Having helped change television forever, they aimed for the pictures, scripting and starring as co-leads of the touring bar band Badmouth. Franken is the one with the ’fro; Davis is the one with the ’fro. Both mainly just wanna smoke pot and get laid; both front the film’s least engaging minutes.

Luckily, One More Saturday Night is an ensemble comedy with multiple overlapping storylines. A sad-sack widowed dad (the great Chelcie Ross, Major League) has his first date in 23 years. His eldest daughter (Nan Woods, In the Mood) plans to lose her virginity. His youngest daughter (Nina Siemaszko, Airheads) throws a wild party while babysitting an infant. And so on, diverging, converging and interweaving until the sun rises, bygones become bygones, and everyone enjoys communal flapjacks.

Franken and Davis’ script quickly sets up the chessboard for maximum madcap antics that fall just shy of wringing no more than a couple of overly gracious chuckles. Here’s the thing: That’s fine, because One More Saturday Night is exceedingly affable, which many funny ’80s comedies are not. Ross and Woods each get nice moments that can’t help but feel real and tender. The movie’s shortage of laughs may account for why it barely played theaters. It contains nary a pair of stolen underpants, act of nonconsensual sex nor Asian stereotype.

Actually, it has no Asians at all. But it does have Black people and, remarkably for the era, they’re not made the butt of the joke. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

This year, film fans, we finally got the sequel we thought would never happen. After what seems like a lifetime, the retro vibes are back, landing from the skies on a highway to the danger zone! No, not Top Gun: Maverick, but Out There Halloween Mega Tape, the second part to 2013’s WNUF Halloween Special.

If you enjoyed WNUF, you need not know anything further to place this follow-up atop your watchlist. However, inquiring minds wanna know, so allow me to indulge them.

WNUF’s gifted director, Chris LaMartina (What Happens Next Will Scare You), continues the faux-show aesthetic without repeating the same joke. This time, we get two back-to-back programs, seemingly recorded years apart on the same VHS tape. First, a Halloween-themed episode of tabloid talk show Ivy Sparks, in which the eponymous and costumed host (Call Girl of Cthulhu’s Melissa LaMartina, absolutely nailing the Jenny Jones-style shenanigans) interviews a would-be vampire, alien abductees and someone claiming to have sex with the ghost of a Civil War widow.

Following that half-hour is an hourlong broadcast of Out There from Oct. 31, 1996. Co-hosted by a post-Sparks Sparks, the show airs live from a farm reported to be the site of recent UFO activity. Although it’s obviously akin to Fox’s Sightings and its infamous Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction special, to say more would spoil the surprises. What doesn’t ruin a thing is mentioning how accurately Mr. LaMartina captures the low-rent appeal of “the fourth network”’s exploitative programming of the time.

Of course, that UHF parodic pulse carries through each morsel of Mega Tape’s real meat: the commercials. As with WNUF, they’re dead-on, here with parodies of Cops, the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Pure Moods CD and Lorenzo Lamas’ Renegade syndicated series, plus station IDs, PSAs, newsbreaks and even lotto numbers. From spots for movies, toys, CD-ROM video games, a trucking school and local restaurants (“I’ve got a prescription for pepperoni!” exclaims Dr. Pizza), the ads are — like the whole of Out There Halloween Mega Tape — endlessly creative and pure pleasure. —Rod Lott

Get it at WNUF Big Cartel.

Pot humor may help The Murder Podcast eventually find a cult, but — as is the case 9 times out of 10 (or 378 out of 420) — the movie doesn’t need the boost of bud. It’s funny enough on its own.

The lead performance of unknown actor Andrew McDermott is up to 90% of the reason. Sporting a Michael J. Fox babyface that goes a long way for likability, he’s laugh-out-loud hilarious; scene after scene, line reading after line reading, his Chad is reminiscent of peak Steve Zahn. His Funyuns-and-Fright Night approach consistently cracked me up.

Living in his sister’s basement, Chad is a slacker with a poor work ethic and a poorer gag reflex. Rather than get a real job, he and his nerdy best friend (Cooper Bucha, Judas and the Black Messiah) harbor delusions of their ramen review podcast breaking big.

But when their suburban town of Harbor Falls starts seeing strange deaths after a homicide-free run of 20 years, Chad smells money in not noodles, but the caboodle of corpses — hence, The Murder Podcast. Their amateur investigation puts them afoul of cops, a TV news reporter, Chad’s brother-in-law and Sam Raimi-level spookies.

Although it’s similar in tone to Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, I don’t mean to suggest writer/director William Bagley’s first feature is quite as winning; the third act’s heavy shift to the supernatural tips the scales away from what the film does best. But it’s close enough to run circles around so many indie horror-comedy wannabes, from John Dies at the End to Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. Bagley’s premise is not just supported by strong effects and delivery, but timely in our nation’s collective true-crime obsession. That his lively movie is saddled with such a generic moniker is near-felonious. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Not to be confused with the processed cheese product manufacturer Kraft — or, for that matter, the sea monster Kraa! — a kratt is an mythological monster. Unlike your Medusa or garden-variety minotaur, the kratt is DIY; as legend has it, you build one from whatever you’ve got around the house, make a deal with the devil and, whammo, it does your bidding and brings you riches. Not a bad deal!

Or is it? From Estonia, the film Kratt examines this conundrum in a winning family comedy — assuming your family is good with repeated utterings of the word “fuck,” not to mention the potential inquiry of “Mom, what’s fentanyl?”

When their parents go on vacation, Mia and Kevin (real-life siblings and first-time actors Nora and Harri Merivoo) are left with Grandma (Mari Lill) in the country and, worse, without their phones. Boredom leads them to create a kratt, but a freak accident throws the Satan-swapped soul not into their ramshackle construction, but their grandmother! (It also plants a scythe in her head, but that’s beside the point.)

Instantly, the ever-robed taskmaster of little patience and a big generational gap becomes Mia and Kevin’s slave: a pancake-cooking, house-painting, coop-cleaning, sauerkraut fart-lighting machine.

Although Rasmus Merivoo — the writer, director, editor and kids’ father — smashes the Wes Anderson button a few times too many, he gets a great performance out of Lill and good ones from the children, particularly Nora. Whenever he shifts focus to the village’s bratty governor (Ivo Uukkivi) and squad of social justice warriors, the movie loses a few smidges of charm; these portions of political satire undoubtedly play in Peoria Estonia, but on this hemisphere, they feel like unneeded padding.

Still, Kratt stands astride the fiendish fantasy of Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale and the subversive goofiness of The Peanut Butter Solution, with an eye toward the good-natured gore of Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive. It’s observant, sharp and light of heart even when the comedy grows dark. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.