With Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Tim Burton arrives on the filmmaking scene fully formed, with a ghoulishly whimsical visual style and instinct for offbeat comedy.
Director: Tim Burton
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Family
Run Time: 91′
US Release: July 26, 1985
UK Release: August 14, 1987
Where to watch: on digital and on demand
There is an aspect of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure that makes it distinct from later movies that Tim Burton would go on to direct. Throughout his long and varied career, Burton’s movies have been marked by the presence of eccentric weirdos as the main character. From Batman and Catwoman to Edward Scissorhands to Dumbo, the heroes of Burton’s movies are neurotic, misunderstood and ostracized from “normal” society.
At first glance, Pee-Wee Herman (Paul Ruebens) seems to fit this archetype. In “Burton on Burton,” the director described Pee-Wee as a loner that didn’t care about how others perceived him and “is able to operate in society, and yet is also sort of an outcast.” The world doesn’t stand in contrast to Pee-Wee, normal and cookie-cutter, in order to highlight all of his eccentricities, but rises to meet him. As Pee-Wee travels the American highways, he finds a world just as weird as he is. Pee-Wee belongs. With the uncanny eye for visuals of the former animator that he was, and a knack for comedy, Burton is able to create a wacky, cheerful, kitschy live-action cartoon.
The audience is introduced to Pee-Wee Herman as he wakes up in the morning and goes about his ablutions. Pee-Wee lives in a small clapboard house designed with the colors of a candy store, the sort of house that a five-year-old would imagine living in when they grow up, full of toys and impractical gadgets. He is a grown-up child; sly, sarcastic, petulant and imaginative in the way that children are before they learn maturity and social graces.
Pee-Wee’s small town seems built around him, as he rides his beloved bicycle down the street neighbors cheerfully wave to him, the owner of the magic shop excitedly presents a new shipment of tricks especially for him. The girl at the bike shop, Dottie (Elizabeth Daily), is desperate for Pee-Wee to take her on a date, but, well, it would seem that his only love is his bicycle, a Schwinn that’s been heavily personalized. One day, despite the extensive safety precautions, the bike is stolen. Tragedy of tragedies.
After many frantic attempts to recover the treasured possession, including a trip to the police station with a theory that the Soviets are behind the theft, Pee-Wee turns to a fortune teller. The fortune teller, a shady con artist, informs Pee-Wee that the bike is in a basement at the Alamo Historical Site in Texas.
With the one track mind of a child who has just spotted a MacDonald’s in the distance, Pee-Wee sets out on the road. As he hitchhikes across the country, Pee-Wee encounters various icons of Americana– the escaped convict, the haunted highway, the lonely waitress, biker bars and, eventually, Hollywood. The road-side spots that Pee-Wee passes through are dressed up in a mix of 1950s and 1980s aesthetics for a kitschy, “pop art” effect, full of curios and tchotchkes.
From Large Marge to Simone the Waitress to Hobo Jack, all of the characters that Pee-Wee encounters are as offbeat and cartoonish as he is. Like David Lynch during the same time period, Burton was able to tease out the absurd weirdness hiding underneath the Apple Pie and Picket Fence dream of American society.
The picaresque quality of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure allows Burton to indulge in various different genres and styles of comedy – slapstick, vaudeville, parody, horror, surrealism, fantasy, stop-motion animation, and the Kaiju. There’s a sense that Burton is delighted by the endless possibilities of filmmaking. Anything that can be imagined can be put on screen, no matter how absurd or outlandish. To watch Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is to watch a director at play, while having the maturity and discipline to turn it into something cohesive enough for a wide audience to enjoy.
Tim Burton would go on to make better movies, but none with such a sense of fun. As a director Burton is widely known for his macabre gothic imagination – preternaturally pale character moving around sharply angled, expressionistic sets – but in this movie his talent for comedy is fully formed and on full display. His superb visual eye helps him to create a movie logic that supports a character as outlandish as Pee-Wee Herman. To top it all of it’s an incredibly funny movie that will delight both children and adults with its surreal, oddball charm. It is a movie that beautifully sets the tempo for Burton’s career, illustrating his singular brand of ghoulish whimsy and love for the outcast.
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is now available to watch on digital and on demand.
