Big Top Pee-wee (1988)

Very disappointing...

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Better than most people think

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Pee-Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) has a farm. EIEIO. His best friend is Vance the Pig and they have a secret lab. He is engaged to school teacher Winnie (Penelope Ann Miller). After a big storm, a traveling circus led by Mace Montana (Kris Kristofferson) arrives in town. The townspeople are hostile so Pee-Wee invites them to stay at his farm. He falls for trapeze artist Gina Piccolapupula (Valeria Golino).Pee-Wee engenders some likability from the first movie. I never watched the TV show although I don't know how this ties into the playhouse. I like Pee-Wee but stepping out on Winnie is problematic. Winnie saves it for him. I like the pet pig but I don't think Pee-Wee should own a muddy farm. It's like somebody simply put a farm and circus together in a grab bag.

I've never heard of Pee Wee Herman before a few days ago, as I live in France, where he's just not popular, when I noticed Paul Reubens' performance in Cheech & Chong movies, I decided to look closer for some more piece of exuberance, as I love this kind of eccentric character, and so I discovered Pee Wee's Big Adventure —surprisingly directed by an unknown-at-the-time Burton— and had a really good time watching it. When I saw there was a sequel, I managed to find the DVD, and just watched it a couple hours ago. Coming with the critics now.The first thing to say, if you're a fan of Pee Wee Herman and you're not a kid, you'll just really enjoy that movie. I laughed for real several times, which is not that easy, as I watch about 300 movies of all kind a year -279 in 2008-, so in my opinion, that's a good point. I won't say this is an adult feature, it's just that contrary to Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Pee Wee's character here is more based on a teenager kind, as sex-related humor and scenes are developed here. To say so, Pee Wee has now a stronger sexual identity than in PWBA, where he was just trying to avoid any close contact with the ladies he now goes for them. That part of Pee Wee is really interesting to see on a movie, as you can imagine with the large amount of comedy Pee Wee carries within him. About the structure of the movie itself, well, it's not that great, it misses the genius part making all of scenes unique and important like in PWBA, as this is not a road-trip but a small town based action, plus some characters are just not enough developed to carry the movie further on. For example, apart from the American-Dreamed-face of Kristofferson, and the simple beauty of Valeria Golino, you won't be deeply touched by their story, not interesting or innovating at all. That's to say it could have been any circus-based comedy, with a talking pig for kids and sex-related visual jokes for adult, which wouldn't worth to be seen, if it was not a Pee Wee Herman story —the very limited number of them on the big screen makes it a must to see if you love Pee Wee. In a few words, poorly conceived but fun as a Pee Wee movie can be.

I'm amazed by the negative reviews, this movie was outstanding! I think you have to appreciate Pee Wee humor, but if you do, then I think you'll agree this movie is brilliant, just like all of Paul Reubens' humor.One thing to note, I had not watched Pee Wee's Big Adventure when I first saw Big Top, so maybe my expectations were different. And I had to watch Big Top (and Big Adventure) a number of times in order to catch and appreciate all of the subtleties.Here is a perspective that might help: Pee Wee's movies basically show things from the standpoint of a little kid describing his world once he grows up. For example, a child might imagine that he will have a bicycle that can fly and do all sorts of "cool" things that in reality are impossible, but he doesn't have the cognitive skills to think about whether things like this are possible. He just makes up his story the way he wants it to be. Pee Wee's movies bring those types of childhood dreams to "reality" on the screen, with a bunch of unique grown-up humor and some often strange but appropriate music mixed in. Taken from that perspective, these movies are absolutely brilliant.

We somehow went from a rousing cross country adventure that was the first Pee Wee movie with lots of colorful characters and some really strange situations, but overall funny to a one town movie that is strange and not in a good way. We don't get the scenery and we do not get a very good or funny movie this time. Maybe it is because Phil Hartman did not help with the script or maybe because Tim Burton did not direct, but this movie is absolutely nothing like the first film and as I said before that is not a good thing. This time we have Pee Wee on a rather boring farm, where he has a talking pig and the towns folk are a bunch of bores. Then the circus gets blown into town and that shakes things up. That is about it, besides the odd love triangle involving Pee Wee...who for some reason goes from a loner and a rebel to kind of a perv. There are a couple of chuckles to be found near the beginning of the movie, but once the circus hits it is rather tedious to watch. Like I said you go from all the wacky stuff in big adventure to one setting and one setting only. You have a few stars in this one, but they don't add to the movie, only to the misery. The ending is so stupid I could not watch it again. All in all I would say skip this movie unless you are a die hard Pee Wee fan which I am not. He was amusing in the bizarre adventure world, but he comes across as rather embarrassing and even creepy in the Big Top.