Long before he was stripped of his fortune for something completely blown out of proportion Paul Reubens became an idol of sorts for pretty much all the kids in the world and launched himself to fame with this film that I am pretty sure i have seen more than 100 times.
It was 1985, we had Atari and the Nintendo Entertainment System was right around the corner. You found out about movies by word of mouth and when you found one that your parents would let you watch and it had a bunch of laughs in it, you watched it over and over and over again.
The movie doesn't have a great deal of depth but it didn't need it. Pee Wee was just such a lovable character that the collection of silly scenes were enough to entice people of all ages to watch it. Reubens was extremely gifted in his portrayal of a man-child who lives a perpetual youth and has an unnatural attachment to his bicycle. That's actually the entire premise of the film. His bike gets stolen and he spends the entire film trying to find it, accidentally creating an epic adventure in the process.
Most people don't know this but Tim Burton was the director of this movie and it was his very first full-length feature. Pee Wee was relatively unknown prior to this movie's release despite the fact that Paul Reubens had developed the character many years prior on stage in a popular live-action skit called "The Pee Wee Herman Show." Paul Reubens actually developed the show after not being cast in Saturday Night Live (he was a finalist but lost to Gilbert Gottfried.) This stage production was created on a shoestring budget of $3,000 that Paul Reubens borrowed from his parents and it just kept getting bigger and bigger.
Now if you are young you probably don't understand how iconic Pee Wee was back in the 80's. I mean, the dude was everything. All kids mimicked the character and it was later turned into an extremely profitable franchise of a weekly television program and millions of dollars worth of merchandising. All that was brought to a halt when "Pee Wee" was arrested for indecent exposure in an adult movie theater.
When i think about it I believe that this was likely my first time experiencing how the media can completely blow something out of proportion and destroy a person's life. We see it all the time these days but this was the first time I recall it happening to someone who was a massive part of everyone's lives one day, and then completely blacklisted the next. It was a shame.
Reubens eventually bounced back and even had some major roles in Hollywood films later. However, for those of us that were kids in the 80's I can honestly say that there was probably no one person more iconic and famous than Pee-Wee Herman.
If you haven't seen this movie you should see it. The humor is mostly pretty slapstick and each scene is kind of a mini-movie on its own - the overall story isn't terribly important. It should also be noted that you don't have to look very hard to identify a lot of quite amateurish oversights on the part of the production team. That is just one more reason to watch the film closely.
It may seem like I am being unfair and over-rating this movie because it was a big part of my childhood and if you think that you are absolutely correct.
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