Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (Redux)

1985 wacky children's movie

Rating: 16/20 (I forgot to ask the students I watched this with.)

Plot: The titular masturbator tries to locate his stolen bicycle.

I watched this at school on one of those days when we celebrate mediocrity. We got to pick our own movies, and I was showing them The Karate Kid. Unfortunately, the Internet stopped working around the time Daniel was buying Elizabeth Shue lunch, and since I was streaming the movie, we couldn't continue. Luckily, I had this as a back up.

I watched this the same day I got my evaluation rubric from my assistant principal. It's not good news. Turns out that I am a barely effective educator which sucks because I really do want to be good at my job. I'm convinced that I'm no longer wanted at the school that I work in. The administrator is mad at me because I wasn't wearing shoes one day when I went to pick up standardized test materials from the office. We had this conversation:

Ass. Principal, looking down at my feet: Do you have shoes today?
Me: Yes. My feel have been bothering me during softball season, so. . .
Ass. Principal: You need to fix this situation.

Then, he was mad at me because I was reading Elie Wiesel's Night, a book that I think all students should read. The problem is that it's on the 9th grade reading list. The problem I have is that nobody seems to read it in 9th grade. He also made a reference to me when conferencing with another teacher. "Shane's a good guy," he said. He also said, "Shane the Brain," laughed, and then repeated, "I call him Shane the Brain." I wasn't aware of this, and although it sounds sort of harmless, I'm not sure he means it in a good way. Combined with news I heard two days ago that my principal referred to me as an "oddball" when talking to a teacher I'll be working with next year, this is troubling.

I don't really want to teach there anymore, but I'm too expensive for any other school to have any interest in me. After all, who wants to hire a guy with as much experience as me who still manages to only be "barely effective"? And what else am I going to do? I'm an English major, and I now have a master's degree that any non-education people would be impressed with. I can't do anything else anyway! No skills whatsoever. I fear that I'm going to have to spend the rest of my professional life in a place where I don't feel appreciated and where apparently I'm only barely effective.

It really dampened the emotional high that you get from watching Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. I wrote about this movie somewhere else. Here, I'm giving it an extra point because of the raw sexuality displayed in the scene where Pee-Wee is wrestling with a shirtless Francis in a pool. Or maybe it's a large bathtub. Francis is Mark Holton who had arguably the greatest year of any actor in movie history with this movie and his role as Chubby in Teen Wolf. He's definitely a lot better than "barely effective." This movie's uneven and juvenile, and it doesn't seem to be too distant from current movies and television made for children that irritate me. That's a misplaced adjective clause because it makes the reader thing I'm talking about children who I hate instead of movies and television that I hate, but I'm leaving it because that seems to be the sort of thing a "barely effective" educator would do. Somehow, this manages to deliver more joy than irritation though. Absurdly large silverware, a Rube Goldberg breakfast, bicycle fetishism, the lonely meanderings of a middle-aged man-child, the juvenile exchange with Francis, bike gymnastics as impressive as any bicycle scene not involving Muppets, some teens stoic reactions after a Pee-Wee bike crash, the reference to "things you wouldn't understand" when talking to Dottie, the Hitchcockian music and nods to Vertigo when Pee Wee discovers that his bike has been stolen, Elfman's genius in helping this thing swim, Amazing Larry's plethora of trickery, Madame Ruby and her shoddy prognostications, Large Marge and animated Large Marge following an animal gag, a Harryhausen allusion, a tour through the Alamo sans basement, a hobo played by Burton-regular Carmen Filpi, the kid taking a picture of Pee-Wee after he asks about the basement and is answered with laughter, Satan's Helpers and Pee-Wee's answer that "Nobody hipped me to that, dude," a dream sequence involving clowns, elves, manic energy.

A quick question--Is Pee-Wee struggling with homosexuality? Is his "big adventure" the discovery of the unexpected pleasures derived from experience with female genitalia? Is Diane Salinger and Diane Salinger's voice enough to get an immature homosexual in a tight-fitting suit a little curious? Is "the basement of the Alamo" a euphemism? Is a dinosaur's mouth a yonic symbol? Am I overthinking things or not thinking about them enough?

My 8th graders seemed to like this movie for the most part. They laughed a lot. One of them, when we were still on the menu screen, asked, "Isn't that the guy who self-abused himself in a movie theater?"

I've never seen Big Top Pee-Wee which is strange because I like Pee-Wee and circuses. I'm sure there's a little person in it. I do have the soundtrack on cassette, but I'm not sure why.