'PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE' NOTHING BUT A GIANT BORE

By Bill Hagen

From The San Diego Union-Tribune, 09.16.1985

Some things are just meant to be approached gingerly, such as barbecued beef liver. Or a Pee-wee Herman movie. Then there are other things that are to be avoided or ignored in the fervent hope that the need for them will go away, such as an appointment for root canal. Or a Pee-wee Herman movie.

Well, heaven knows I tried to ignore it, but it just keeps hanging around, making money. And when there was no other recourse I approached Pee-wee's Big Adventure not only gingerly, but practically under duress. It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

The thing is, Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens), the ultimate nerd, is an acquired taste, and on the day I was force-marched to the movie house, he was apparently a taste acquired only by three others, probably Larry, Moe and Curly. At least there was an audience of only four persons at the weekday matinee, each of whom, for reasons of his own, seemed furtive about his presence there.

Pee-wee is, or is supposed to be, the perennial, put-upon kid, even though by now he's closer to middle-age than adolescence, but at best he's an unpleasant kid, at worst an obnoxious one. There's something sneakily nasty about him, particularly in his callous, selfish treatment of friends and acquaintances.

Anyhow, the springboard for his big adventure is the theft of his beloved bicycle, and a most likely suspect is his rich, chubby and mean neighbor (Mark Holton), whose father said he could have anything he wanted for his birthday. And what he has always wanted is Pee-wee's bicycle.

Mystifyingly enough, Pee-wee rallies several people to his cause, including a girl (Elizabeth Daily) who has a crush on him, which makes her not exactly a Stanford coed intellectually. But ultimately he will have to go it alone on a bizarre odyssey that will involve him with, among others, an escaped convict--he was convicted of ripping a do-not-remove-under-penalty-of-law tag from a mattress, which is typical of the movie's sophisticated humor--a long-dead truck driver named Large Marge; a motorcycle gang; a psychic, and a San Antonio waitress who yearns to see Paris.

But it's Pee-wee who dominates the story and the screen. Perhaps dominates isn't the precise word. Monopolizes is more to the point. And the Pee-wee brand of humor is tough to sustain long enough for a skit, let alone a feature-length movie. suit, his red bow tie, his overly made-up face, his nasal voice, his irritating and constant cackle begin to grate. And that doesn't even take into consideration the unrelieved and uninspired silliness of the script concocted by Reubens and co-conspirators Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol.

Tim Burton doesn't so much direct as oversee, sort of like a traffic cop. His basic chore, of which he is never unaware, is to keep Pee-wee at the center of everything, and he certainly succeeds at that. The rest of the cast are pretty much on their own, as long as no one tries to do too much.

Herman, or Reubens, is the product of an improvisational company who, for some totally baffling reason, became a cult hero. But considering others raised to similar status, perhaps not baffling at all. Perhaps just a sign of the times.

Whatever, even if this particular kind of comedy works in brief spurts--it's at least worth a giggle when, ironically, the focus is not on Pee-wee but, in a movie-within-a-movie, on James Brolin and Morgan Fairchild, who are playing Pee-wee and his girlfriend--it is far from enough to justify a full-length feature.

But it must appeal to some segment of the movie-going public, maybe even a large segment. Other movies flit in and out of theaters, particularly at the end of summer, but Pee-wee's Big Adventure endures. And that's about what his audience is asked to do--endure. It's not easy.