Summary
- Pee-wee's Big Holiday successfully brings back the beloved character of Pee-wee Herman, proving that Paul Reubens can still play the role after three decades.
- The film avoids sequel clichés by keeping a simple and uncynical plot, focusing on Pee-wee's charm and comedic scenarios.
- Pee-wee's Big Holiday modernizes the narrative by subtly exploring a love story between Pee-wee and Joe Manganiello, showing the film's inclusiveness and relevance in today's cinema culture.
There is no phrase in Hollywood’s recent history that’s been more popular than the “legacy sequel.” Films like Creed, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Jurassic World, and David Gordon Green’s Halloween essentially remade the first film in their respective franchises, but used it to usher in a new generation of heroes and play on the audience’s nostalgia. At their best, legacy sequels like Top Gun: Maverick and Blade Runner 2049 have been able to re-energize their franchises with emotional follow-ups; at their worst, films like 2015’s Vacation or Independence Day: Resurgence have felt like nothing but unneeded retreads. Surprisingly, one of the best legacy sequels in recent memory came in the form of Netflix’s 2016 comedy feature Pee-wee’s Big Holiday. While the notion of a new Pee-wee film three decades later seemed like a disastrous proposal doomed to embarrass those involved, the late great Paul Reubens was able to bring the same character back and retain the magical spirit of his most iconic character.
‘Pee-wee’s Big Holiday’ Respected Paul Reubens’ Character
Paul Reubens first developed the character of Pee-wee Herman as a stage persona and later expanded the role in an HBO special that led Tim Burton to create the 1985 comedy classic Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The film was not only a breakthrough for Burton, but proof that Reubens could sustain the charisma behind the Pee-wee character for an entire narrative. At their worst, movies inspired by sketches like Coneheads failed to do anything interesting with what was essentially a single joke, but Pee-wee’s Big Adventure featured Reubens giving an actual performance. Pee-wee proved to be a character that had a real personality behind his comic appearance, and Pee-wee’s Big Holiday refreshingly retains the same wacky energy.
Pee-wee’s Big Holiday starts off by simply not acknowledging that it’s been thirty years later; it simply begins with Pee-wee still living in Fairview, where his skills as a chef at a local diner have charmed the local population. It’s when Pee-wee befriends the actor Joe Manganiello (who appears as himself) that he sets off on an adventure to New York City in order to attend Manganiello’s birthday party. The conflict isn’t derived from any silly plot device, but due to the inherent kindness of Pee-wee. He knows that getting to attend Manganiello’s birthday will mean the world to his new best friend, and wants to do everything in his power to make him smile. This is the perfect motivation for Pee-wee, and shows that director John Lee understood why Reubens’ character had become so endearing in the first place. The real test was whether or not Reubens could still play a character that he had created over three decades ago.
The answer? He most certainly could. Paul Reubens apparently didn’t seem to age at all since his last appearance as Pee-wee, and he easily slips back into the character as he goes from one goofy scenario to another. Since the plot isn’t very complicated, the responsibility fell on Reubens to maximize the potential of each scene. It’s absolutely hilarious to watch Pee-wee mess around with a flying car, flee from a farmer that wants to wed him to one of his daughters, or hitch a ride from a group of traveling salesmen, as Reubens acts like Pee-wee is trying to maintain his composure when he’s clearly under a lot of stress. Even when he’s just making goofy faces as he rides on the back of Manganiello’s motorcycle, Reubens proves why the spirit behind Pee-wee’s youthful sense of adventure is still so charming after so many years have passed.
‘Pee-wee’s Big Holiday’ Avoids Sequel Clichés
The plot is remarkably uncynical and simple, giving Paul Reubens enough time in each scenario to maximize the potential of each joke. This marked an improvement over the previous attempt at a sequel to Pee-wee’s Big Adventure; the 1988 sequel Big Top Pee-wee had failed the character by attempting to go bigger and weirder; this undercut the magic that Pee-wee inherently had. Pee-wee simply getting into trouble and charming everyone with his winning personality was all that was needed, and Pee-wee’s Big Holiday kept that sense of optimism. The film draws its value from the chemistry between Manganiello and Herman, and the unlikely duo somehow transforms into the oddly perfect comic pairing.
Joe Manganiello has been a rising star over the last few years and had first shown his brilliance in comedy in 2015’s Magic Mike XXL. There’s an obvious line that the film is drawing between Reubens and Manganiello; he shows up in Fairview flexing his muscles and riding a massive motorbike like a hunk straight out of a fantasy romance sequence. His hyper-masculinity couldn’t be any more different than Pee-wee’s whimsical aloofness, so seeing two characters that are modeled to feel like complete opposites has an inherent comedic value. It’s hilarious to watch Manganiello become charmed by Pee-wee and attempt to look at the world the same way he does; however, it was even funnier to see Pee-wee try to impress his new friend by acting tougher.
Legacy sequels often fail if they rely too heavily on nostalgia instead of modernizing the narratives for the audience of today. Instead of forcing the audience to deal with a ton of callbacks to Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday pushed the boundaries in terms of its social message. It’s rather obviously a love story between Pee-wee and Mangallieno, a subtext that was much easier to tackle in 2016 than it was in 1985. While the film never crosses the line and confirms that their bond was romantic, the innuendo was also part of the joke. It showed that after three decades, Reubens was interested in using the freedom of today’s cinema culture and telling a Pee-wee story that was more inclusive.
Comedy sequels are often disastrous when they try to tell the same jokes as their predecessors, but Pee-wee’s Big Holiday marked a significant expansion of Pee-wee’s world and introduced him to places like New York that he had never been before. The fact that so much time had passed in between installments is just circumstantial; Reubens was able to slip seamlessly back into the role that defined his legacy.