MARCH 22, 2016
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 28 years since Pee-Wee Herman last appeared in a film, but he’s baaaack in “Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday,” which opened on Friday in selected theaters and is currently steaming online on Netflix.
The much-beloved character, the creation of comic actor Paul Reubens, was all the rage in the 1980s, serving as the embodiment of a small-town innocent with a fervent imagination offering an appealing solace to what was for many a difficult decade. Pee-Wee first appeared in 1977 as a character in the L.A. improv group, The Groundlings. Reubens worked closely with his friend and colleague, the late Phil Hartman, to develop the character with his skinny grey suit and red bow tie and his relentlessly sunny outlook on life.
After a successful nightclub run in Los Angeles, which was recorded by HBO, Pee-Wee came to the attention of Warner Brothers which paired him up with an unknown first-time director named Tim Burton. The resulting film, 1985’s “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” was dumped in theaters in the dog days of August, but it received unexpectedly good reviews and became a word-of-mouth hit. A second film, 1988’s “Big Top Pee-Wee,” received less-than-kind notices and disappeared.
In between the two films, Reubens developed a Saturday morning kids’ show for CBS entitled “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,” where Pee-Wee has his own secret space with talking puppets and furniture as well as visits from such recurring characters as Cowboy Curtis (Oscar nominee Laurence Fishburne), Reba the Mail Lady (“Law & Order’s” S. Epatha Merkerson) and old salt Captain Carl (Hartman). Its imaginative writing and visual design was nothing like Saturday morning TV had seen before, and its successful 5-season run snapped up several Emmy Awards and more acclaim than Reubens had ever previously received.
Then came 1991 and Reubens’ arrest for publicly masturbating in a porn theater in Sarasota, FL, and his career came crashing down. It took Reubens years to rehabilitate his image, but Pee-Wee has been absent from film screens since then. Enter film comedy icon Judd Apatow, who teamed up with Reubens to bring Pee-Wee back to the movies.
I wish I could say his return was a glorious one, but “Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday” is a decidedly mixed bag.
The first half-hour is terrific, as it captures some of the same magic of “Big Adventure.” Pee-Wee is the most loved citizen of the small town of Fairville, where 1950s cars and skateboards can co-exist and the town’s only movie theater is playing a cartoon festival. Pee-Wee’s delight in his job as a short-order cook is cut short, though, when he is told by the fellow members of his band, the Renegades, that they’re breaking up because they have lives. Distraught, Pee-Wee is on the brink of thinking that life’s not worth living when suddenly the actor Joe Manganiello walks into his diner. Pee-Wee has no idea who he is, but with his tight T-shirt, motorcycle helmet and black leather gloves, he is sex-on-a-stick for Pee-Wee, if he thought in those terms. (When Manganiello seems astonished that Pee-Wee has never even seen “Magic Mike,” Pee-Wee says “You’d think so, but no.”)
That moment captures the humorous homoerotic subtext in much of Reubens’ work. Certainly on “Playhouse,” it was reflected in his interactions with the equally dim Cowboy Curtis and especially with the ever-present shirtless Latino houseboy/lifeguard/gardener Tito (season 1) or Ricardo (seasons 2-5). With Pee-Wee, it comes across as harmless flirting, as opposed to the advances made by some of the town’s….ugh…ick…girls.
When Joe learns that Pee-Wee has never even crossed the town line of Fairville, he urges Pee-Wee to take a road trip to New York with an invitation to his big birthday bash there next week. When he finally summons his courage to hit the road, it evokes the memorable road trip in “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” as he crossed the country to find his lost bike. If only it was that memorable.
There’s no equivalent in “Big Holiday” of that earlier film’s white-shoe bartop “Tequila” dance or even of Large Marge. Here we have a trio of female bank robbers (bleh), a farmer trying to marry off his 9 zaftig daughters (tedious), ending with Pee-Wee falling down an open New York City well (Manhattan has so many of those!). Even when Manganiello returns to the film, it’s just too little, too late.
I wanted to like this so much, but the script by Reubens & Paul Rust just doesn’t deliver. Still, I hope that Pee-Wee has another big adventure left in him and that he doesn’t stay away so long next time.
GRADE: C
