Burton Begins

Movie Review:
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure

1985 / 1 hr., 30 min. / PG

Director: Tim Burton

How and why Paul Reubens came up with the stage act of Pee-Wee Herman in the early 1980's is beyond my research interests as an armchair critic, but by 1985 the bizarre amalgam of grown man and hyperactive child had received the green light from Hollywood, and thus came Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.

Pee-Wee Herman lives the life of a young boy in a man’s body.  His bedroom is cluttered with toys, he assembles breakfast using a machine that would make Rube Goldberg drool, his front yard puts the phrase “storybook house” to shame, and his one passion is his very colorful bicycle – which is also coveted by his rich friend Francis Buxton (Mark Holton).  When Pee-Wee’s bike is stolen and his one suspect denies any involvement, Pee-Wee sets off to find it.

Convinced by a fortune-telling huckster that the bike resides in the basement of the Alamo, Pee-Wee begins a hitch-hiking trek to the historical monument.  Rides are provided by an escaped convict (Judd Omen), a spooky old female trucker (Alice Nunn), and a boxcar complete with a toothless hobo (Carmen Filpi).  Pee-Wee also gets into scrapes with a jealous boyfriend (Jon Harris), a gang of bikers, and the casts and crews of several Hollywood motion pictures.  Along the way he supposedly learns some valuable lessons about life from a bike repair specialist (Elizabeth Daily) and a waitress (Diane Salinger), among others – but the plot and any meaning attached to it are primarily a clothesline on which to hang episodic scenes of silliness.

And that silliness is actually quite effective.  I first saw the film shortly after its arrival on VHS back in the ‘80's, and just recently showed it to my son for his eighth birthday: Nearly thirty years after my first viewing, I still enjoyed it as a successfully comic achievement.

The screenplay is by Paul Reubens along with Michael Varhol and Phil Hartman.  As one of the few legitimately funny writers and performers in the history of “Saturday Night Live”, Hartman (who also makes a cameo appearance as a reporter) was undoubtedly a major contributor to the film’s enduring cleverness.  To this day I still smile at Pee-Wee in a nun’s habit, at one of Large Marge’s particularly surprising facial expressions, and at the outrageously boring spiel of the Alamo tour guide (improvised by Jan Hooks on the spot).

The film is the freshman effort of director Tim Burton.  With his previous experience limited to working on cell animation for the Disney studios and crafting a couple of short films, Burton takes the reins of a full-length feature with a delightfully carefree hand.  Colorfully improbable characters and scenes bounce right along, with doses of Burton’s macabre sense of humor and his love of stop-motion animation thrown in, adding up to a wonderfully eclectic mix that all manages to work together.  Decades later, as Burton’s career wallows in heavy-handed remakes of both his own and others’ material, it is refreshing to come back to a time when he was just plain zany in his artistic focus.

Which brings us to Pee-Wee Herman himself.  How does one even begin to critique the acting for a character who is designed on purpose to lack credibility in our world?  He is someone whose mental maturity and physical maturity are not in sync, and if he existed as anything other than a theatrical fabrication of Reubens, he would have been institutionalized long ago.  He wears a suit that is too small; holds no job we can discern yet has money to dispense at will; his personality would rub just about everyone the wrong way; and apparently he totes a wig, mustache, and green knitted coat in his knapsack – yet he is adored by a young woman (Elizabeth Daily), greeted with a smile by his neighbors, and is ultimately embraced by everyone he meets on his journey.  I am reminded of the more recent Napoleon Dynamite here, in the sense that both characters simply need to be accepted as plausible in their fictional worlds before they can be truly enjoyed for what they are.

And since the film represents so many first-time cinematic efforts, I should mention the music by Oingo Boingo’s lead singer, Danny Elfman.  After years of writing songs for one of the foremost bands of the “New Wave” era in pop music, Elfman was approached by Burton to write his first feature-length score.  Though convinced he would send Burton’s career down in flames, Elfman went ahead and produced what is perhaps one of the most iconic scores of his career.  As with Burton, I find Elfman’s career drifting off into scores that are far less interesting than his earlier works, so popping the original soundtrack of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure into my CD player is never disappointing.

There are movies of such intricate artistic expression that they cry out for an essay-length review.  Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is not one of them.  As professionally published critics look with increasing disdain on any movie that dares to be trivial in its political and social commentary, it is important to remember that movies were once about plain old-fashioned entertainment.  This is a film that feels like everyone involved just wanted to have the fun of making a movie, so that we could have the plain old-fashioned fun of watching it.

Artistry: 7
Entertainment: 9