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It’s been twenty-eight years since Pee-Wee Herman made a movie, and while there have been attempts over the years to get another one up on the big screen, it took the modern convenience of Netflix to actually get things rolling, bringing a cinematic experience to the home screen.
Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday plops us right down in the middle of Pee-Wee Herman’s life, as if no real time had passed in those twenty-eight years. Pee-Wee still lives in a home full of Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions in the town of Fairville, a town from which he’s never ventured beyond its borders (so that kind of cancels out the existence of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Big Top Pee-Wee, or just makes them stories unto themselves featuring the same character). Pee-Wee is perfectly happy with his daily life until one day a mysterious stranger walks into the diner where he works and orders a milkshake.
The two share an instant connection over root beer barrels candy, and the stranger asks Pee-Wee to show him around town. Pee-Wee is so smitten that he leaves the diner unattended and shows the man the town, or rather a scale model of the entire town Pee-Wee has built. But what is beyond the borders of that town? Pee-Wee has no idea. The stranger, who it turns out is actually actor Joe Manganiello (whom Pee-Wee has never heard of), tells Pee-Wee he needs to live a little, see the world … and come to his birthday party in New York City. After Joe leaves, Pee-Wee realizes the rut he’s been in and decides to take off on a big adventure … or, big holiday.
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He travels the country, meeting strange, new people, getting sidetracked by a band of girl thieves (modeled after the chicks in Faster, Pussycat … Kill, Kill), a farmer and his nine ready to wed daughters, and The Amish. But as the clock ticks, Pee-Wee begins to fear he may never make it to New York in time for Joe’s birthday.
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I was hoping Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday would be more akin to Big Adventure than Big Top Pee-Wee but it sticks to a more realistic world (although of a very heightened reality) of the latter film. It’s not without it’s absurd moments though, and a few of them quite funny. I laughed out loud at some of the sillier moments involving sound effects than I did at anything else, although I did chuckle quite a bit. There were a few moments that I really expected them to go full Big Adventure on us like when Pee-Wee was in a dark room, or lost outside in the dark, waiting for cartoon eyes peering out of that darkness but it never happened (nor was there any attempt at stop motion or CG animation). For a long-time Pee-Wee fan, I was really missing those things that made the character and the first movie (and the TV show) so special.
For the long-time fans, with sharp eyes, there are still some callbacks to the Pee-Wee of yore. Lynne Marie Stewart, who played Miss Yvonne in the stage and TV versions of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, is nearly unrecognizable as a woman who runs a snake farm (and we all know how Pee-Wee feels about snakes), and John Paragon (Jambi the Genie) has a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo as a TV cameraman. Diane Salinger, who played Simone in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and reunited with Paul Reubens in Batman Returns as Penguin’s mother, has a memorable role as Penny King, a New Yorker Pee-Wee meets during his travels who seems to be channeling 1940s Katherine Hepburn and Lauren Bacall. She also has a flying car, giving the movie it’s one big moment of whimsy.
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While the film may not be as funny and fantastical as I had hoped, the filmmakers still get a lot right, particularly in the production design and over-the-top characters, many of whom seem to be stuck in a psychedelic version of the 1950s. It also seems impossible that Pee-Wee can look virtually the same as he did back in 1985, but he does thanks to the expertise of makeup artist Ve Neill and the modern miracle of digital makeup.
The ageless Pee-Wee and the carefully non-specific era of this and the other films, will keep Pee-Wee timeless and ageless for generations to come.
It’s great that Netflix was able to bring Pee-Wee back to the movies in Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday, and if the film is successful enough for the streaming service, I’d hope that they allow him to make another one, one that perhaps can really bring back the Tim Burton-inspired world of the first movie.
Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday isn’t a disappointment, but it did leave me wanting more.
Have you watched Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday? Tell us what you think in the comments section below!
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