Watching “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” a Netflix movie receiving a limited theatrical release, brought to mind the sensation evoked by Paul Reubens’ stage revival of the character several years ago: An initial rush of nostalgia and enthusiasm, which by the end had given way to silliness fatigue, and the question, “When will this be over?” That’s not a slam of the Pee-wee Herman experience, really, as much as a reminder that some things are best consumed in smaller doses than a 90-minute movie, much like those little root-beer barrels that Reubens’ perpetual child so adores. 
 
 Produced by Reubens with Judd Apatow, and co-written by the star with Paul Rust, who’s featured in Apatow’s Netflix series “Love,” “Big Holiday” is hardly a big idea. It is, rather, a collection of little ones, with Pee-wee having a chance encounter with a kindred spirit, played by Joe Manganiello, getting invited to a party and impulsively leaving his little town of Fairville for New York, despite his assertion in the early going, “I don’t want to go anywhere or try anything new.” 
 
 The subsequent road trip includes, but isn’t limited to, thieves, a stopover in Amish country, and what amounts to an extended farmer’s daughter joke. And, this being a Pee-wee adventure, there’s no shortage of word play, puns and loud, piercing screams. 
 
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 The producers have asked that reviewers not disclose certain plot points, which is odd, since the cited “spoilers” are almost wholly irrelevant. (They have also asked that the project be included in feature film coverage as opposed to television, which seems like a virtually meaningless distinction, given the likely consumption of this product, and the distribution pattern – streaming day and date online with its theatrical bow.) 
 
 The biggest surprise, frankly, might be that the funniest person here is frequently Manganiello. Indeed, the mere visual juxtaposition of the towering “Magic Mike” star and Reubens in the same frame together is practically a special effect in itself. 
 
 That said, unlike in “The Muppets” – which might be the franchise’s closest cousin spiritually speaking – there aren’t really a lot of celebrity cameos. Instead, first-time director John Lee (a veteran of Comedy Central’s “Inside Amy Schumer” and “Broad City”) simply bounces from episode to episode, until Pee-wee finally reaches his destination, and the movie, both sweetly and somewhat mercifully, runs out of time. 
 
 To his credit, Reubens remains as deft at bringing his man-sized child to life as he ever was, a staggering 35 years after inventing him. But it’s perhaps no accident that one of Pee-wee’s most treasured incarnations – beyond the 1985 movie “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” directed by Tim Burton – might be the more concentrated Saturday-morning TV show that adults and college kids greedily consumed, while their children and younger siblings identified the title character as one of them. 
 
 Pee-wee’s grasp of childhood has always been central to his charm. What’s more elusive is discerning a rhyme or reason to Netflix’s nascent movie strategy, which is obviously derived in part from the service’s closely held metrics – in this context, basically making new versions of stuff people already like to watch, like Adam Sandler movies – although how precisely the numbers add up on a project such as this is anybody’s guess. 
 
 “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday” is a harmless but not especially vital or necessary addition to that portfolio. As for those who would accuse a critic of being a party pooper for this assessment, the only appropriate response would be: “I know you are, but what am I?” ||||| "Pee-wee's Big Holiday." Netflix 
 
 When Paul Reubens created the Pee-wee Herman character in the early 1980s as a stage act, audiences instantly fell in love with not just the exterior — tight-fitting gray suit, red bow tie, unusual voice — but his childlike admiration for life and all its quirkiness. 
 
 Pee-wee then became a household name when Reubens structured the act as a children's TV show, then teamed with Tim Burton to make the classic "Pee-wee's Big Adventure." 
 
 With Netflix seemingly eager to bring back just about anything we're nostalgic for from the past few decades — "Full House," "Gilmore Girls" — it jumped at the chance to make a new Pee-wee movie with Reubens and producer Judd Apatow. 
 
 And I'm here to tell you that "Pee-wee's Big Holiday" is as much fun as the first Pee-wee movie. (Let's just pretend "Big Top Pee-wee" never existed, OK?) 
 
 This time, Pee-wee is settled in the quaint 1950s-ish town that he's lived in his whole life. But then actor Joe Manganiello shows up — his name in the movie is Joe Manganiello — on his motorcycle and completely wows Pee-wee with his cool style. This motivates Pee-wee to do something he's never done in his life: leave town and take a holiday. 
 
 Joe Manganiello is the movie's secret weapon. Netflix 
 
 That's right, in this Pee-wee universe, he never went to the Alamo to find his bike, like he did in "Big Adventure." 
 
 But as with "Big Adventure," Pee-wee embarks on a hilarious road trip that leads to strange encounters. Just a couple — that won't spoil anything as they are featured in the trailer — involve three female bank robbers who are dressed like they came straight out of "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" and a team of unique hairstylists. 
 
 There's a lot of fun in the silly gadgets featured throughout, from how Pee-wee wakes up every morning to the items of a traveling salesman Pee-wee gets a ride from. 
 
 In many ways, Reubens, who cowrote the screenplay with "Love" creator and star Paul Rust, uses the structure of "Big Adventure" to tell the story. There's a silly opening dream sequence, the road-trip storyline, and the goal of the trip, which is wackier this time around than finding his bike. 
 
 And then there's just Reubens' strange brand of humor that works as well today as it did in the '80s. I defy you not to laugh out loud during the balloon bit. 
 
 Yet the secret weapon of the movie, its modern touch, is Manganiello. He is extremely funny and has a chemistry with Reubens that you'd never think would work until you see it on the screen for yourself. 
 
 "Pee-wee's Big Holiday" is available to stream on Netflix starting on Friday. ||||| You can put a date on Pee-wee Herman’s peak popularity, but you can’t tie him to a particular time period. Inspired by the kiddie-TV hosts of the 1950s, Paul Reubens created Pee-wee in the ’80s, and gave the character a fascination with junk-store kitsch from practically every era of American pop culture. (Who else was showing their Batman Credit Card to David Letterman in 1984?) But there’s always been an edge of the new, now, and avant garde to the character as well, whether it’s trusting the design of his TV digs to Jimbo cartoonist Gary Panter or inviting Grace Jones to his Christmas party. So if Pee-wee Herman is to make a cinematic comeback in the 21st century, he might as well do it on Netflix, which puts Pee-wee’s Big Holiday—the first movie starring the character since 1988’s Big Top Pee-wee—on a cutting edge that people also use to watch Friends reruns. 
 
 
 
 But that distribution model also means that typing “Pee-wee” into the search bar brings up a Big Adventure and a Playhouse right alongside Big Holiday. The new film—directed by Wonder Showzen’s John Lee, produced by Judd Apatow, and co-written by Reubens with Love’s Paul Rust—doesn’t shy from comparisons to Pee-wee’s first, Tim Burton-helmed big-screen outing. The parallels are right there in the title, but the films also follow roughly the same structure, a hero’s journey that breaks Pee-wee out of his idiosyncratic small-town routine and sends him on an epic road trip. Pee-wee’s Big Holiday is a comeback vehicle, but it’s also an attempt to reprise one of the funniest movies ever made. To a large degree, it succeeds. 
 
 Big Holiday returns Pee-wee to the highways and byways for a shaggier, less rigorously paced adventure, finding frequent and long-lasting laughs along the way. At 63, Reubens’ physical and vocal range isn’t what it once was, but he still gives Pee-wee (and Big Holiday) an undeniable energy. Dulled though his tics and twitches might be, Reuben’s face still sparks to life in close-up, like a child discovering all the many ways to twist and contort the human features. It’s clear that Pee-wee and his weird, wonderful world continue to amuse and excite Reubens, and his Big Holiday collaborators share the sentiment. Lee’s direction doesn’t have the unmistakable personal stamp of a Burton, though that just gives more authorial control to the main character. Pee-wee’s Big Holiday is the Pee-wee movie that really makes its possessive apostrophe count. 
 
 When the film opens, Pee-wee has no interest in traveling beyond the borders of Fairville, a backlot burg that looks like a time capsule and runs like clockwork. (Everything’s so predictable in Fairville, the local diner even has color-coded hairnets that correspond to the days of the week.) While he’s slinging hash at that diner, Pee-wee strikes up a bond with a mysterious stranger (Joe Manganiello in the role he was born to play: “Joe Manganiello”), who encourages his new friend to “live a little,” and eventually hands him his ticket out of town: an invitation to Manganiello’s birthday party, all the way across the country in New York City. Between Fairville and the Big Apple, there are reptiles (and reptile puns), farmer’s daughters itching to get hitched, an Amish idyll, and a trio of bank robbers (Alia Shawkat, Stephanie Beatriz, and Jessica Pohly) that represent the closest thing Big Holiday has to antagonists. 
 
 If there’s anything tying together the detours and roadblocks that comprise Big Holiday, it’s the film’s big, bold, screaming celebration of human difference. Pee-wee sticks out from his square Fairville surroundings in the same way the character has always stuck out from the entertainment mainstream, and the characters he encounters on the road live similarly outsider existences, like a traveling salesman (Patrick Egan), a quartet of traveling hair stylists (Darryl Stephens, Dionne Gipson, Anthony Alabi, and Sonya Eddy), or an eccentric heiress (Diane Salinger, providing Big Holiday’s most poignant link to Big Adventure). The concept is made explicit in his first encounter with the bank robbers, but it runs beneath the surface of the entire film. Pee-wee is searching for other Pee-wees. 
 
 The film is littered with Easter eggs for the Pee-wee faithful, but it’s a bit of an homage to cinematic weirdos, too. The bank robbers appear to be refugees from a Russ Meyer movie (Pohly’s character takes some styling tips from Tura Satana in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), and there’s a touch of John Waters to the unmannered performances and the non-Hollywood looks of the supporting cast. Outside of the film’s potential Large Marge moment—a bit of gloopy CGI that’s raring to traumatize the youngest members of the streaming generation—that lack of polish is where Lee’s touch is most evident. Amid the fantasia that Reubens has spent decades crafting, the director coaxes a strange sort of naturalism out of the cast, which both complements and corresponds to Pee-wee’s manic energy. 
 
 Reubens and his collaborators appreciate the allure of the familiar, but they also understand its limitations. When Big Holiday mimics Big Adventure, it’s in an “any note you can reach, I can go higher” fashion: Its Rube Goldberg contraptions spill out of the Herman residence and into the streets of Fairville, and though Mark Mothersbaugh’s instrumental score resembles Danny Elfman’s compositions for Big Adventure, it ups their Raymond Scott quotient. There’s no frame as singularly stirring as Pee-wee’s nocturnal encounter with the Cabazon Dinosaurs; instead, that epic scale is translated to extended comic set-pieces that boldly challenge the “funny, then not funny, then way funnier than it was before” limits of The Rake Effect. Big Holiday may be a sequel in spirit only, but it definitely subscribes to the “like the first, but bigger” philosophy of other big-screen follow-ups. 
 
 From the slow-motion fantasy sequences where Joe Manganiello dons his own version of Pee-wee’s glen-plaid getup, to the finale where the ensemble members gather around their TVs to support the man-child who’s had an effect on each of their lives, Big Holiday is ultimately a testament to the lasting power of Reubens’ signature character. Like Fairville, he exists outside of time, and new generations of Pee-wee fans will be able to stream Big Holiday as part of the same, flat-circle pop-culture timeline as Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Pee-wee’s Playhouse. For those who’ve stuck with the character after all this time, the movie is an unexpected bonus—one that, cheekily, encourages breaking out of comfort zones every once in a while.
– Pee-wee Herman is back in his first movie since 1988's Big Top Pee-wee—and this time he's coming to us via Netflix. Bestowed an invite to a birthday party, Pee-wee leaves his comfortable Fairville and confronts reptiles, bank robbers, and some ladies looking to get hitched in Pee-wee's Big Holiday. Here's what critics are saying: Audiences are in for "a shaggier, less rigorously paced adventure" than they might be used to with Pee-wee, but they'll find "frequent and long-lasting laughs along the way," writes Erik Adams at AV Club. Even at 63, Paul Ruebens hasn't lost his "undeniable energy" and the film as a whole is "a testament to the lasting power of Reubens' signature character. Like Fairville, he exists outside of time." Jason Guerrasio agrees that "Reubens' strange brand of humor … works as well today as it did in the '80s." Some of the finest moments come via gadgets or a scene involving a balloon, he writes at Business Insider. "Yet the secret weapon of the movie, its modern touch, is (Joe) Manganiello. He is extremely funny and has a chemistry with Reubens that you'd never think would work until you see it on the screen for yourself." "The odd-couple bromance … is something to behold," but Pee-wee's "antics haven't aged well," writes Brian Truitt at USA Today. Whether he finds a receptive audience among a new generation "depends on their capacity for old-fashioned humor," he adds. There's nothing close to as memorable as what can be found in Pee-wee's Big Adventure, he says. "Holiday can't be considered a big adventure or even a worthwhile nostalgia trip." Brian Lowry felt "an initial rush of nostalgia and enthusiasm, which by the end had given way to silliness fatigue, and the question, 'When will this be over?'" which might simply be "a reminder that some things are best consumed in smaller doses," he writes at Variety. "Reubens remains as deft at bringing his man-sized child to life as he ever was," but "the biggest surprise, frankly, might be that the funniest person here is frequently Manganiello."