Thirty Five Years Ago - Pee-wee’s Big Adventure

This wasn’t a film that I was necessarily into when it came out - it was more when I started getting into Tim Burton’s films and wanting to get into his back catalogue that I found this one. It did, however, originally come out in 1985 into the mix it goes…

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
Dir. Tim Burton / Dur. 91 mins

What’s It About? Pee-wee Herman’s beloved bike is stolen and he will leave no stone unturned in his cross-country efforts to find it…

Why’s It Good? What you’ve got here is a distinctive director at the start of his career flexing his muscles and seeing what he can get away with when he’s been given  a bit of budget to play around with. You’ve got elaborate Heath Robinson-style contraptions, stop-motion animation, a dance sequence, a film within a film - all examples of playing around and seeing what can be got away with in a live action film. It’s also a melding of two very offbeat sensibilities, both of whom have come from children’s TV and film (Pee-wee creator Paul Reubens having obviously portrayed the character on TV before this and Burton having been a Disney animator earlier in his career) and both of whom want to push what they can get away with. It’s also the beginning of a long association between Burton and composer Danny Elfman; an association that includes such films as Beetlejuice, Batman, Batman Returns, Nightmare Before Christmas, Mars Attacks!, Sleepy Hollow and more…

It doesn’t quite have that distinctive Burton visual style that would become apparent from Beetlejuice onwards (and is slightly toned down in Batman before being dialled back up again in Batman Returns) but there are touches of the director Burton will become throughout.

It’s a joyous and silly film with a number of sequences that have always stuck in my head since I first saw it - Large Marge and the Tequila dance in particular (I can't help but picture the tiny back and forth hand movements whenever I hear that song). Admittedly, Herman is the sort of character that I can appreciate could be somewhat Marmite-y but I very much am on board with his particular brand of weirdness. Does it stand the test of time? Yes, in large part because Pee-wee Herman exists in his own slightly skewed, childish reality anyway so it stops it feeling like it’s particularly tied to the 80s. If you’re looking for a dose of camp and naive silliness, you could do worse than give this one a go.