Pee-wee Herman Remains Timeless, Classic In New Netflix Feature

Paul Reubens may be old enough to be your father or your grandfather. But Pee-wee Herman remains childlike even in his grown-up gray suit and red bow tie, some 31 years after his creation first hit the big screen in 1985’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.

The best news of all, watching Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, is that he remains as timeless as ever, even if his surroundings jump from the 1950s to very much in the moment of 2016. Ruebens, his Big Holiday co-writer Paul Rust, and co-producer Judd Apatow brought Pee-wee back via Netflix (where Rust and Apatow also created the new series Love), and they, director John Lee and many of the cast showed up at Austin’s SXSW to debut the film on the big screen to a wildly appreciative and enthusiastic audience Thursday night.

In this era of peak nostalgia — where the children of the 1990s demanded more Full House and they got it (and are going to keep getting it dude) and where J.J. Abrams forced it upon himself to reawaken Star Wars as the children of the 1970s had remembered it — it’s perhaps more amazing how well Pee-wee Herman has endured.

If he seems like he must come from another planet, well, the makers of Pee-wee’s Big Holiday are two steps ahead of you. An out-of-this-world fever dream, in which Pee-wee yells, “I want to go but I can’t leave home!” quickly paints a picture of his life in which he surely must go somewhere, someday, and the sooner the better. Because how long can one stand stuck in the 1950s-warped Rube Goldberg Machine of a town like Fairville, anyhow? Pee-wee is trapped in Fairville just as the characters in the 1998 film Pleasantville are transported four decades back in time. But Pee-wee’s time-space continuum opens up once Joe Manganiello roars into Fairville on his motorcycle and triple-cool struts into the diner where Pee-wee the fry cook is minding the store.

Manganiello portrays the most playful, imaginative version of himself. Amazed at how he connects with Pee-wee, and even more amazed at how Pee-wee has never heard of him — “Magic Mike?” he asks, to which Pee-wee replies coyly, “You’d think so. But no.” — Manganiello invites Pee-wee to leave Fairville for a holiday to attend his birthday party in New York City.

Are you going to stay where you are, or live a little? It’s a rhetorical question, for the needs of the plot, the title, and us as an audience demand that Pee-wee live a lot more than a little. And so he does. Bank robbers, farmer’s daughters, snake farms, big hair salon buses, helicopter wigs, flying cars, grand rapids, cave men, the Amish, and balloon noises all join in Pee-wee’s holiday hijinks.

Alia Shawkat plays one of the bank robbers who discovers a special, lasting connection with Pee-wee (the other robbers are played by Stephanie Beatriz from Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Jessica Pohly). She’s not the only familiar face in Pee-wee’s Big Holiday. Brad William Henke (Orange is the New Black, Justified) leads Pee-wee through the trees out of the forest as a grizzly man. Diane Salinger, who played Simone in Big Adventure, takes Pee-wee into the sky in her flying plane as socialite Penny King. And Lynne Marie Stewart — who has played Mother Superior and Zelda the Bearded Lady in the previous Pee-wee movies, and Miss Yvonne in his original 1981 HBO special through the Saturday-morning TV of Pee-wee’s Playhouse up to his 2011 Broadway reboot — returns here in a brief but memorable role as a snake farm charmer.

Pee-wee’s dialogue always produces a few lines you may want to wear out later. Among them here:

• “Let me let you let me run!”
• “L.A.T.T., I.H.T.B.G. Look at the time, I have to be going”
• “Cool! Double cool!! Triple cool!!!”
• “Breaking rules, breaking hearts, that’s what life is all about.”

As for this movie. It’s been real. It’s been fun. But has it been real fun? Yes.

Because it’s a Pee-wee Herman movie.

IT’S A PEE-WEE HERMAN MOVIE!

[Watch Pee-wee’s Big Holiday on Netflix]

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.