‘Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday’

When Paul Reubens took the stage in character as Pee-wee Herman for an HBO special in 1981, I almost fell off the sofa laughing. It was one of the silliest, most insanely creative, weirdest and flat-out funniest acts I’d seen in a long time.

Pee-wee/Paul has had quite the journey since then, with highlights including Tim Burton’s brilliant “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” in 1985, the award-winning children’s series “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” from 1986-1991 — and the lowlights being the arrest of Reubens on indecency charges, and the disappearance of the Pee-wee character for a very long time.

With time Reubens the actor made a comeback and the character of Pee-wee surfaced in small moments, e.g., “Funny or Die” skits and Pee-wee voicing movie trailers on Jimmy Fallon’s show. A Broadway revival of the stage show was taped for HBO.

Now, a half-dozen years after reports first surfaced of a full-length feature film about Pee-wee to be produced by Judd Apatow, we get the Netflix-released movie, “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday.”

Pee-wee, we hardly knew ye.

In this version of the Pee-wee Herman universe, Pee-wee is still that weird (and yes, sometimes creepy) hybrid of man and boy. He lives on his own and he has a full-time job (as a cook in a diner), but he wears the tight gray suit and the white shoes and the red bow tie, giving him the appearance of a ventriloquist’s dummy come to life, and he still regards the universe with childlike wonder, and everyone in Pee-wee’s idyllic town of Fairville refers to Pee-wee as a boy.

The ruggedly handsome actor Joe Manganiello plays, well, the ruggedly handsome actor Joe Manganiello, and it’s a gamer of a performance. This version of Joe is a vain and ridiculous but also sweet-natured lunk who arrives in Fairville on a motorcycle for no discernible reason, orders a milkshake from Pee-wee, and strikes up an instant, intense, magnetic friendship with Pee-wee that takes “bromance” to the verge of “romance.” I mean, these two REALLY like each other.

Joe tells Pee-wee it’s time for Pee-wee to live a little. In five days, Joe’s hosting his own birthday party at his New York City penthouse, and he wants Pee-wee to be there as his guest of honor. And with that, Joe rides into the sunset. Well, east.

Off we go. The hopelessly naive Pee-wee hits the road, along the way encountering a trio of female bank robbers straight out of a Russ Meyer movie; a disturbingly cheerful traveling salesman who sells old-timey gag items; a shotgun-toting farmer with nine zaftig daughters, all of whom instantly want to marry Pee-wee; a woman who looks and talks as if she’s Katharine Hepburn playing Amelia Earhart, and the operators of a snake farm, among others.

At times Pee-wee’s ingenious methods of dealing with one trippy encounter after another are pretty funny; just as often, sequences die on the vine.

While Pee-wee fantasizes about arriving in New York and having an amazing time with Joe Manganiello — just the two of them, laughing and partying and dancing in slow motion — Joe pouts in his bedroom, ignoring a houseful of party guests because the only guest he cared about was Pee-wee, and it appears Pee-wee might never make it to New York. OK.

Reubens is 62, but through a combination of makeup, lighting and digital retouching, Pee-wee looks pretty much the same as he did some 35 years ago. The voice, the signature laugh, the mugging, the repetition of juvenile put-down phrases — all right there, all as solid as ever.

Pee-wee is still a startling, original and strangely endearing creation. He just deserved a funnier, more intriguing holiday.

— Richard Roeper is a film critic for The Chicago Sun-Times.