Still a trip

Pee-wee Herman, the character played by Paul Reubens in a couple of surreal feature films in the 1980s and in a one-of-a-kind TV series in the late ’80s and early ’90s, was ostensibly killed off by the actor’s arrest on sex charges in a porno theater in 1991.

Reubens, nevertheless, has had a long career as a comedian and character actor, and now he’s back playing Pee-wee in a third feature film, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, which was released last week, and is available for streaming on Netflix.

It’s a little weird, not least because Reubens is now in his 60s. But a little weirdness has always been a key ingredient in the frivolous mythology of Pee-wee Herman. Besides, Reubens’ Pee-wee, an eternally pixilated 12-year-old trying to look like an adult, has never looked or acted his age, and still doesn’t.

Big Holiday, written by Reubens and Paul Rust and directed by John Lee, effortlessly resurrects farcical Pee-wee at his best while also managing to generate an underlayer of dark comedy that touches on the character puzzles of both Pee-wee and the actor who plays him.

Best of all, there’s a wealth of comic invention in the story itself. Pee-wee is traveling cross-country for the birthday party of his adored new friend Joe Manganiello (played by Manganiello himself). Along the way, Pee-wee has frolicsome encounters with Farmer Brown and his nine man-hungry daughters, the crew at the Freewheelin’ Mobile Hair Salon, a neurotic mountain man who calls himself Grizzly Bear Daniels, Peggy King (the Door Bell heiress) and her flying car, Gordon the Traveling Salesman, and the all-girl gang of very butch bank robbers whose names are Bella, Pepper and Freckles.