The voice has changed a bit (puberty and all) and the make-up is a lot thicker, but in reprising his Pee-Wee Herman persona a few decades after its prime, Paul Reubens manages to get the most important thing right: the character’s childishly anarchic delight in all things silly and stupid. As with his first big-screen adventure, Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday sends the small-town oddball on a road trip, this time to New York City for Joe Manganiello’s birthday party (the stripping co-star of the Magic Mike films proves to be a delightfully good sport about sending himself up). Pee-Wee negotiates the vignettes that follow much like a toddler would, wildly veering from giddy excitement to temper tantrums, whether he’s taken hostage by a trio of Russ Meyeresque women bank robbers or staying overnight at a quaint Amish village. Maybe it’s just because I had seen the preachy (if gorgeously animated) Zootopia a few days earlier, but the extended single take of Pee-Wee blowing up a balloon, then slowing letting the air squeak out of it for minutes on end for his new Amish friends strikes me as a pinnacle of children’s entertainment. Sometimes all we need is nonsense.
