Pee-wee’s latest adventure, “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday” is his biggest yet, his first outing in ultra HD 4K courtesy of a Netflix premiere today.
It’s not the brilliantly innovative and clever 1980s Saturday morning Pee-wee’s Playhouse or his first cinematic outing directed by Tim Burton, “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” (or even “Big Top Pee-wee”), but one suspects that longtime fans will be at least mildly satisfied with the first original production in about three decades.
And even with extreme close-ups in ultra HiDef, 63 year-old Paul Reubens looks great, as does this entire production in 4K resolution.
All the crazy wake-up gadgets and silly fantastical modes of transportation — a flying three-wheeled car? — are back, along with Pee-wee’s corny dialogue, banter, facial expressions, and voice manipulations.
Sitting down to a meal with a farmer and his nine eligible daughters at the table, the farmer asks Pee-wee if he’d like to say a few words.
Pee-wee: “Oh sure. Encyclopedia, pimple, and hairball.”
Farmer and daughters: “Amen.”
The basic plot here is that Pee-wee is convinced he is in a rut working at the diner in his hometown of Fairville. The unlikely one to convince him that he needs to go out and explore the world is actor Joe Manganiello (“True Blood,” “Magic Mike”), playing himself rather hilariously at times as a stranger in town on a motorcycle (he is also seen in multiple slow-motion fantasy vignettes with Pee-wee). After misadventures on the farm and elsewhere, he winds up in Las Vegas before being whisked to New York in the flying car.
Everything from the pattern in Pee-wee’s signature grey suit, the green garnish he mistakenly eats, and the river rapids and waterfalls in which he gets caught, all pop out in vivid detail like never before.
Now if we could go back and see his Playhouse in Ultra HD.
— By Scott Hettrick