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#50 - Pee-wee's Big Adventure
Tim Burton, 1985
An eccentric man-child goes on a cross-country trek when his beloved bicycle is stolen.
I've never watched anything to do with Pee-wee Herman, the tuxedo-clad goofball played by the rubber-faced Paul Reubens, but I'd heard good things about Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, a feature-length chronicle of its eponymous hero's latest batch of shenanigans. In this case, the big adventure ends up beginning when Pee-wee's most prized possession - his bright red bicycle, which he dreams about riding in the Tour de France - is stolen while he is out shopping one day. He then launches into a singularly obsessive quest to find his bicycle; his journey takes him to all sorts of places and puts him in contact with people who are either not amused by his antics or prove too crazy even for him (or both). Pee-wee's Big Adventure definitely doesn't seem like a film that needs a particularly complex plot to carry it through its rather brief running time, but that just raises the question as to whether or not it can provide enough amusement to justify its status as a comedy.
The humour in Pee-wee's Big Adventure tends to be broad and family-friendly; while that isn't necessarily an obstacle to a film being funny, none of the jokes ever really seem to land. Between his weird appearance, gurning mannerisms, and fundamental immaturity, Pee-wee makes for an extremely difficult protagonist to enjoy when it comes to witnessing either his triumphs or his failures (and it's not like the supporting cast gets a whole lot to do as they embody a number of flat characters who all seem defined by their extremely slight connections to Pee-wee). The plot is flimsy and speeds from scene to scene at the drop of a hat, playing out like a series of live-action cartoon segments with barely any connection. This looseness seems to apply to the actual humour, which bounces between jokes with no punchlines or punchlines with no jokes. I reckon that the latter metaphor does a good job of summarising my perception of Pee-wee's Big Adventure. The humour on display is so incredibly simple that it feels fundamentally incomplete, resulting in a film that takes the feeling of strange bemusement that one gets from hearing a punchline by itself and stretches it out across ninety straight minutes.
Tim Burton, 1985
An eccentric man-child goes on a cross-country trek when his beloved bicycle is stolen.
I've never watched anything to do with Pee-wee Herman, the tuxedo-clad goofball played by the rubber-faced Paul Reubens, but I'd heard good things about Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, a feature-length chronicle of its eponymous hero's latest batch of shenanigans. In this case, the big adventure ends up beginning when Pee-wee's most prized possession - his bright red bicycle, which he dreams about riding in the Tour de France - is stolen while he is out shopping one day. He then launches into a singularly obsessive quest to find his bicycle; his journey takes him to all sorts of places and puts him in contact with people who are either not amused by his antics or prove too crazy even for him (or both). Pee-wee's Big Adventure definitely doesn't seem like a film that needs a particularly complex plot to carry it through its rather brief running time, but that just raises the question as to whether or not it can provide enough amusement to justify its status as a comedy.
The humour in Pee-wee's Big Adventure tends to be broad and family-friendly; while that isn't necessarily an obstacle to a film being funny, none of the jokes ever really seem to land. Between his weird appearance, gurning mannerisms, and fundamental immaturity, Pee-wee makes for an extremely difficult protagonist to enjoy when it comes to witnessing either his triumphs or his failures (and it's not like the supporting cast gets a whole lot to do as they embody a number of flat characters who all seem defined by their extremely slight connections to Pee-wee). The plot is flimsy and speeds from scene to scene at the drop of a hat, playing out like a series of live-action cartoon segments with barely any connection. This looseness seems to apply to the actual humour, which bounces between jokes with no punchlines or punchlines with no jokes. I reckon that the latter metaphor does a good job of summarising my perception of Pee-wee's Big Adventure. The humour on display is so incredibly simple that it feels fundamentally incomplete, resulting in a film that takes the feeling of strange bemusement that one gets from hearing a punchline by itself and stretches it out across ninety straight minutes.