'Pee Wee's Big Holiday' is a film caked with nostalgia

There’s always a hint of sadness with nostalgia. Sometimes it stems from knowing we cannot revisit that exact place in that exact time again. Sometimes it’s because we see the cracks and flaws or changes that have transpired over the gap in time. Other times, it feels as though we realize we had recalled only the sunnier times and tended to mentally neglect those darker days.

“Pee Wee’s Big Holiday” (which was released just last week on Netflix, which also financed it) is a film caked with nostalgia, more so than how much makeup must have been placed on Paul Reubens’ face, as despite the almost three-decade gap in time since being on the screen, the man does not seem to have aged a day. There are countless throwbacks to the heydey of the films and shows of the past. For those who saw his off-Broadway return a few years ago (myself included), there are even more bits sprinkled within.

And while there may be many moments that echo the candy-coated world of the beloved television series and the subsequent Tim Burton feature “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,” there’s very little “Big” about this Netflix-produced feature film.

It’s hard to blame Reubens, whose elfin creation still maintains the same bratty man-child attitude and arsenal of old-school comebacks, even if his voice seems a little thinner. Reubens co-wrote the outing, which places Pee-Wee in his small hometown of Fairville, which he is reluctant to leave. One day, actor Joe Manganiello (playing what I can only assume is a goofier version of himself) rides in on a Harley and invites Pee-Wee to his birthday party in New York City in a week.

I will break for a second here to announce that it helps the picture if you not only know, but are a fan of Manganiello, as there is humor derived from the fact that Pee-Wee has never heard of him.

Neither had I, only to be informed by my wife that he starred in a few films and is perhaps most famous as the husband of actress Sofia Vergara. None of this is ever really mentioned in the film (not even a cameo by his wife, dammit!), but he is presented to the audience as though he is acting royalty.

That birthday-party setup is really the only plot of “Holiday,” which itself is a rosy reminder of when comedy could merely focus on wacky adventure without high levels of snark and scatological humor. Along the way, Pee-Wee encounters a bizarre snake farm, an Amish community and a gaggle of vixens that seemed to leap from a Russ Meyer film.

The setup for each encounter seems rife with comedic potential, and things do manage to steer into the weirder world which the Pee Wee persona inhabits, but there never seems to be enough to dance on the edge of visual or narrative insanity that “Adventure” (or the TV show) was able to create.

I’m also not sure “Holiday” will easily convert any new fans into the fold, as his comedy was enmeshed in the culture of the '80s, when he was at the height of his popularity. There are full-grown adults who may have grown up having never seen a Pee-Wee show or film, and they may not be able to fully embrace the impishly inane human prancing about on their screens. But for those of us who recall fondly the half-hours spent inside the “Playhouse” or joining Pee-Wee on his “Big Adventure,” “Holiday" is a mild reminder that will at the very least cause us to revisit those original wild times that remain unblemished by time, even if, unlike Pee-Wee, we are all decades older.