Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday – 4 out of 5
I’ve been a fan of Pee-Wee since I first saw Pee-Wee’s Playhouse as a child. When the series was released on DVD, I purchased them all and I still laugh my rear off like it was the first time I saw it when I revisit Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure every now and again. Needless to say, when I found out that there was going to be an exclusive Pee-Wee film coming to Netflix, I was super excited. I gotta say, Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday was a lot of fun!
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| Netflix When I first watched this, I thought, "Wow, Paul Reubens doesn't age." Then I found out they used make-up and computer effects to "de-age" him. I became a man that day...also, severely depressed. |
Pee-Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) is a lovable man-child who is quite content to spend the rest of his life in his small town. However, one day, actor Joe Manganiello (perfectly cast with Joe Manganiello) comes strolling into town and he and Pee-Wee hit it off and become besties. Joe invites Pee-Wee to his birthday party in New York and urges the man to put his fears behind him and hightail it to the Big Apple. Now Pee-Wee is on the biggest adventure of his life and soon learns that getting to New York isn’t going to be an easy task.
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| Netflix The comedy duo I never knew I needed in my life. |
I watched this one the moment it became available to stream on Netflix and had a lot of fun watching it. Normally, I review every film I watch—with a few exceptions—but, for one reason or another that wasn’t clear to me at the time, I decided that I wasn’t going to review this one. However, right before I typed this, I watched it for a second time and had just as much fun as I did on the initial viewing so I decided to review it—because what else am I doing with my time? My experiments in time travel and creating the endless nachos bowl can wait.
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| Netflix It really is just unfortunate formatting on my part that I talked about endless nachos and put this picture afterward. But don't get me wrong, I'm not sharing my nachos with anyone. Sorry, girls. |
Nostalgia is really big right now; whether it be people sharing stuff from their past on Facebook and bragging about how kids nowadays don’t know what it is they’re sharing (for some reason, opening up the youth of today to the things they love seems out of the question) or whether it be X-Files returning or a new Full House series arriving, reliving our glory days (well, at least when it concerns are old entertainment passions) is now all the rage. I won’t deny that a big part of the reason I enjoyed this latest adventure from Pee-Wee is because I’m already a fan of the character and the nostalgia of the fun times of my childhood and re-watching Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure really helped make the whole experience entertaining.
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| Netflix Just two cool dudes. |
I will admit that there are times where the story had moments that were awkward or weren’t as funny as the other times of the film and there is definitely an imbalance when it comes to equally measuring out the more adult jokes and the way more innocent ones. Ultimately, though, when these issues occurred, the entire scene was usually a bit awkward and really was a fault in the current moment of the film and not really a reoccurring issue throughout the film. However, Paul Reubens makes it feels like it hasn’t been over two decades since the last time we saw the character in a film and that helps the awkward moments really well. Additionally, Reubens had a really amusing chemistry with Joe Manganiello and these two elements really helped make a film that already had nostalgia points working in its favor work even better.
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| Netflix Faster, Pee-Wee! Kill! Kill! |
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| Netflix Extra points for having The Swede from Hell on Wheels in the film. |
One thing that really made the whole experience enjoyable was the numerous Easter eggs from Pee-Wee’s various adventures. It was cool seeing Lynne Marie Stewart, Miss Yvonne herself, share the screen with Reubens again, as well as seeing Diane Salinger once again say, “au revoir, Pee-Wee.” Finally, I have to emphasize this: I really found this film hysterical. Yes, there are some jokes that I wasn’t super enthralled with but when this movie gets funny, I laughed till I cried. Whether it be the loud shrieking Pee-Wee did when he was scared or the entire balloon squeaking sequence in Amish country, the funny moments in this film are strong and it really made for a fun film to sit through.
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| Netflix Best scene in the whole film. |
Maybe I’m biased because I love the character of Pee-Wee Herman but I had a lot of fun watching Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday. The story is simple but effective enough to create amusing moments and ones that are perfect for the unique humor of Pee-Wee’s world and it is was just a lot of fun to see Paul Reubens once again wear the grey suit and red bow tie in a feature length film. While I may not see this as a masterpiece like Big Adventure was, I was still very entertained with this feature.