Pee-wee’s Huge Journey: An ‘80s Motion Flick for the Remainder of Us

Editor’s Notice: This text was initially revealed in 2015. It’s being re-published in gentle of Paul Reubens’ passing.

On the finish of 1985’s Rambo: First Blood Half II, after single-handedly rebooting the Vietnam Struggle and rescuing a bunch of POWs, Sylvester Stallone returns to his base and tells his commander that he, like fellow ‘80s hero Bono, nonetheless hasn’t discovered what he’s searching for.

“I need, what they need, and each different man who came to visit right here and spilled his guts and gave the whole lot he had desires,” grunts Stallone, as solely he can. “For our nation to like us as a lot as we like it!”

The stakes are decrease in Pee-wee’s Huge Journey, which hit theaters 30 years in the past subsequent month, on August 9, 1985 — three months after the Rambo sequel. Portrayed by his creator, comedian mastermind Paul Reubens, Pee-wee simply desires his nifty purple bike again, although he sees its theft as a matter of worldwide significance.

“What leads you to imagine the Soviets had been concerned?” a feminine police officer asks Pee-wee early within the movie, proper after his prized possession has been plucked off the road.

He by no means solutions the query — it’s simply one of many many tossed-off jokes in director Tim Burton’s timeless feature-length debut — however even with out delving into Chilly Struggle politics, Pee-wee emerges in its place ‘80s motion star, an unlikely hero in a decade of testosterone-fueled shoot-‘em-ups.

He’s the anti-Stallone/Schwarzenegger/Norris: a giggly 98-pound man-child who makes use of his eager mechanical abilities to not affix bombs to the ends of arrows, however to rig up elaborate Rube Goldberg machines to arrange easy meals.

Stallone eats guys like Mr. T for breakfast. (See: Rocky III) Pee-wee actually eats Mr. T cereal for breakfast. Rambo wears a purple headband; Pee-wee rocks a purple bowtie. And so forth and so forth.

In a bizarre approach, although, Pee-wee was the right hero for the ‘80s. He arrived at a time when commie-fearing politicians like Ronald Reagan had been evoking America’s good-old days, and movies like Again to the Future had been enjoying on the nation’s collective eager for the easier occasions of the ‘50s and early ‘60s. Pee-wee’s Huge Journey is about within the ‘80s, however Reubens’ iconic character is a throwback to a different period — that supposedly healthful time when folks had been first rate to at least one one other and youngsters didn’t even have to lock up their bikes.

In fact, that’s all bullshit, and the implications of these lies are proper there in Pee-wee’s subversive persona. He’s a good-natured and charming till he’s not — after which he’s form of a dick. Witness the kick he will get from taunting arch nemesis Francis at first of the film or the way in which he turns tyrannical when mobilizing his mates to assist him discover the lacking bike.

There’s one thing creepy about Pee-wee’s shit-eating grin and nonstop laughing, and when he dons a gown to assist Mickey the escaped convict evade the police or ignores the amorous advances of Dottie the pet-shop clerk, he’s not merely revealing his boyish innocence. The Pee-wee character is a grown-ass man, not a prepubescent child, and it’s laborious to imagine there’s not some sexual subtext — a slight suggestion that the goofy man down the road is likely to be dabbling in issues society finds deviant.

“There’s a lotta issues about me you don’t know something about, Dottie,” Pee-wee says in one of many movie’s extra memorable bits of dialogue. “Stuff you wouldn’t perceive. Stuff you couldn’t perceive. Stuff you shouldn’t perceive.”

Pee-wee isn’t merely riffing on nostalgia. Together with his faux-rebel posturing — “You don’t wanna get combined up with a man like me” — he’s toying with Regan-era notions of masculinity, presenting a Nice American Hero for youths raised on Saturday Night time Stay and MTV. His phrases are humorous as a result of he’s not a insurgent, and but additionally as a result of he’s. He doesn’t gown or act like everybody else, and as soon as he’s on a mission, nothing — not ghost truckers, jealous boyfriends, biker gangs, or Warner Bros. safety guards — will cease him.

Curiously, in 1985, each Rambo and Pee-wee needed to revisit scenes of crushing American army defeats to finish their quests. Tellingly, Pee-wee’s tour of the Alamo — the place a phony psychic tells him he’ll discover his bike — ends with Tina the tour information utterly glossing over the bloodshed that occurred there. The one issues anybody stands to study from her lecture: tortillas are constituted of corn, and there’s no basement on the premises. Then, everybody however Pee-wee already knew that final half.

Tina’s smiley whitewashing of Texas historical past is a reminder of how presentation trumps reality — a key takeaway of the Reagan years. Burton and Reubens additional make that time within the film-within-a-film finale, as Pee-wee’s story will get retold within the type of an exaggerated Hollywood blockbuster known as, you guessed it, Pee-wee’s Huge Journey. That includes the dashing James Brolin as P.W. Herman — the antithesis of Pee-wee in each approach potential — the meta-movie is supposed to spoof James Bond, not Rambo, however the message is identical.

Brolin’s bearded, blow-dried undercover agent is masculine to the purpose of ridiculousness, a logo of American virility and advantage as laughable because the shifty-eyed bellhop Pee-wee will get to play. No less than Pee-wee’s in on the joke.