Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)

Directed by: Tim Burton

Starring: Paul Reubens, Elizabeth Daily, Mark Holton

This movie’s pretty fuckin’ weird. I guess I should mention that I have never in my life seen an episode of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, the show this movie was based on, so I didn’t really have any idea about what Pee-Wee’s world would be like. Hell, I’m still kinda confused about whether the character is supposed to be a kid that’s just played by an adult actor or if there’s some weird manchild thing going on there.

Pee-Wee Herman gets his precious bike stolen from him one day and goes even crazier than he normally is. He alienates all his friends in his futile search for it, until he finally goes to a fortune teller who makes up that it’s in the basement of the Alamo. Pee-Wee hitchhikes and rides trains with hobos and has zany adventures until he reaches the Alamo, only to find out that it doesn’t even have a basement. He learns that his bike has been taken to Hollywood to be a prop in a movie, so he steals it back and leads everybody in the world through a chase. Finally, a big-time movie producer meets up with Pee-Wee and tells him that he wants to turn this story into a movie.

I know this is an extremely popular cult film amongst my generation, but since I didn’t see it as a kid I guess I didn’t have any rose-colored memories about it. Basically, I didn’t think it was very funny. It’s weird, very much so, and in a way that’s interesting and unique enough in that you get to see Tim Burton’s style before it was really formed. I think the only thing I laughed at was the movie at the end made about the movie where Burt Reynolds played Pee-Wee.