PEE-WEE DEFIES TIME
At 63, he gets digital facelift
Pee-wee’s Big Holiday
Now streaming, Netflix
Taking a trip with Pee-wee Herman is like watching a baby get acquainted with the world. The character’s wide-eyed enthusiasm reminds us of the marvels all around us. Maybe life isn’t so mundane after all. Maybe all we need is a Rube Goldberg machine to propel us out of bed every morning and to deliver us to work. So it’s good to have the suited and bow-tied man-child, made famous by Paul Reubens, back onscreen after a long hiatus. (Big Top Pee-wee came out in 1988.)
The vehicle this time around is the Netflix movie Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, produced by Judd Apatow, co-written by Reubens and Paul Rust (Love), and directed by John Lee (Wonder Showzen and Broad City).
If the title sounds familiar, that’s because it’s nearly identical to Tim Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. And that’s not the only thing this new movie has in common with that wild 1985 road trip. In a world of reboots, you could say that Big Holiday takes the Force Awakens approach: Just as the new Star Wars movie played it safe — by essentially recreating A New Hope — so, too, does Pee-wee’s latest, exploit and play to our nostalgia for the original, without taking any real risks.
Thanks to make up and digital effects, Pee-wee looks frozen in time, even though Reubens is 63. He’s still the impish guy he’s always been. “Look at you, you’re cute as a peanut,” one of Peewee’s elderly neighbours tells him. “You’re the sweetest boy in Fairville.”
With that kind of love, you can understand why Pee-wee doesn’t want to leave his hometown, where he works in a diner, moonlighting as a musician. Plus, imagine all the time it must have taken to fine-tune his work-delivery mechanism.
But Pee-wee keeps receiving signs from the universe that he should consider mixing things up. First, his bandmates tell him they don’t have time to rehearse anymore, so they have to break up. (Pee-wee takes this news about as well as any four-year-old might.) But things start looking up when Joe Manganiello, playing himself, shows up in Fairville and invites Pee-wee to his birthday party in New York. The two turn out to be bromantic soulmates, if only because they both love root beer barrel candy.
At first, Pee-wee balks at leaving Fairville. But who is he to argue with his new best bud, who encourages him to “live a little,” while revving the engine of his motorcycle, before heading out of town?
And so our hero embarks on a solo road trip to the Big Apple. Just as in Big Adventure, Pee-wee meets a parade of nutty people along the way, including three female bank robbers, a travelling tchotchke salesman, mobile hair stylists and an eccentric heiress in a flying car. It’s all gently amusing but not nearly as outrageous or inventive as a fan might hope. And the pace is considerably calmer than the deranged clip of Big Adventure.
The biggest revelation in the movie might be Manganiello, who proved what a gifted comedian he was last summer in Magic Mike XXL.
Some of the most inspired bits involve Pee-wee’s dreams, during which he’s in New York celebrating with Joe. The two dance and jump or ride on piñata horses in slo-mo while speaking Spanish. It’s utterly bizarre and completely hilarious. In other words, just the kind of thing people should expect from Pee-wee.