Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985)
Directed by Tim Burton
The eccentric and childish Pee-wee Herman embarks on a big adventure when his beloved bicycle is stolen. Armed with information from a fortune-teller and a relentless obsession with his prized possession, Pee-wee encounters a host of odd characters and bizarre situations as he treks across the country to recover his bike.
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What critics compared Pee-wee's Big Adventure to
And while it was a little exciting to see the Delorean from Back to the Future again, this particular subplot eventually leads into a Pee-Wee's Big Adventure ripoff - as the two characters are chased throughout the studio.
Though it's not quite his best work (that remains Pee-Wee's Big Adventure), Big Fish does mark Tim Burton's most accomplished and (for lack of a better word) grown-up movie to date.
The plastic accomplishments of his films, starting with 1985's Pee-wee's Big Adventure, have always been their signature achievements, and at least twice, in 1990's Edward Scissorhands and 1994's Ed Wood, Burton's sympathy for earnest, unassimilated dreamer-types nourished his visual imagination with some palatable emotion.
Two masked twins are particularly creepy, especially with a payoff reminiscent of the “Large Marge” scene in Burton’s first major film, “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” — the source of Generation X nightmares that continue into middle age.
If you had asked most audiences and critics in 1985 if Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure director Burton would be one of the most recognized and prominent directors in film history, most of them would have laughed.
Miss Peregrine clamps down on the liabilities enough to let the assets shine, and thirty years after Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, they’re still assets well worth paying attention to.
Deemed too scary for children, the film was never released, but it led to Burton’s hiring by Warner Bros. as the director of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, which became a box-office hit.
His recent efforts, particularly "Planet of the Apes" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", have had little of the wide-eyed wonder that made "Edward Scissorhands" and even "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" such fun.
A passion for a bicycle ("Pee-wee's Big Adventure"); an obsession with a man who dresses up like a bat ("Batman" and "Batman Returns"); an attraction to an android with stainless-steel shears in place of fingers ("Edward Scissorhands"); an unnatural fondness for angora sweaters ("Ed Wood").
That distinctive gothic flair, freed from horror and animated by comedy in great films like Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice , has not gone away, nor has his attraction to stories about imaginative outcasts misunderstood by the squares around them.
With stronger material, Burton's films are capable of great verbal wit ( Pee-wee's Big Adventure , Beetlejuice , Ed Wood ), but Dark Shadows was more suited to a purely visual treatment.
"Edward Scissorhands" is enchantment on the cutting edge, a dark yet heartfelt portrait of the artist as a young mannequin from the creator of "Beetlejuice," "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" and "Batman."
"Pee-wee's Big Adventure" was an unalloyed visual delight, and so was " Beetlejuice ," and "Batman" gave us a Gotham City that was one of the most original and atmospheric places I've seen in the movies.
This is Burton's fourth film, following "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," "Beetlejuice" and "Batman," each of which has seemed to take place in a unique universe, some kind of parallel space and time that blends various eras and mores and movie conventions.
Growing up, I enjoyed Edward Scissorhands a lot, Beetlejuice, some, and have seen both Batman and Batman Returns many times.
Tim Burton, the man-child behind “Beetlejuice” and “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” couldn’t be any more at home with Mr. Dahl’s text.
For one thing, Mr. Burton has shown a fabulous visual imagination in his best movies, such as "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" and the first two "Batman" pictures.
He's also had experience in telling a story about a child-like man who dresses in a funny way and relates to children: "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" was his directorial debut 20 years ago.
Though it's not quite his best work (that remains Pee-Wee's Big Adventure), Big Fish does mark Tim Burton's most accomplished and (for lack of a better word) grown-up movie to date.
Tim Burton (''Pee-Wee's Big Adventure''/''Edward Scissorhands''/"Sleepy Hollow"/"Ed Wood") one of filmdom's more prolific directors is known for his visual flair and storytelling ability, which is considered innovative, imaginative, whimsical, and at times even impishly perverse.
That may be true of most of Burton's films (with the possible exception of "Edward Scissorhands" and "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure").
Burton is a stylist to the end – Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Mars Attacks! are less films and more exercises in the excess of the bizarre, but unlike those films Big Fish feels like a sham, all tripe and not enough of Burton’s gothic childlike mindset, and also infused with a heavy saccharine dose of big-hearted Life Lessons that drop from the screen like anvils made of rock candy.
Within that format, he has been almost entirely successful, from his feature debut at age 26, the cult classic Pee-wee's Big Adventure, to his blockbuster Batman films and his masterworks Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood.
Since Pee-wee's Big Adventure, his 1985 debut feature, Burton's signature films have dwelled in the realm of arrested infancy.
Outside of this, there is nothing of the way that his earlier shorts, Vincent and Frankenweenie , speak to the aesthetic he'd so assiduously cultivate, or that even his sophomore feature, Beetlejuice , looks for all the world like the movies he'd still be making 15 and 20 years down the road.
Growing up, I enjoyed Edward Scissorhands a lot, Beetlejuice, some, and have seen both Batman and Batman Returns many times.
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure may have a more believable devotion to infantile overtures and Ed Wood may be a more respectable ode to the spirit of the eternal outcast, but Beetlejuice is a universe unto itself.
Tim Burton, the Disney animator who directed "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," is the mind behind this stylish screwball blend of Capraesque fantasy, Marx Brothers anarchy and horror parody.
There were glimpses of that sensibility in his grandly peculiar first feature, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure , but that was only a teaser.
Hair disheveled, pallid features, the director of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure surprised Hollywood with a goth-geek style that could only be described as quirky before everything became quirky.
From Adam Sandler in Billy Madison to Will Ferrell in Elf to Steve Carrell in nearly every role he’s taken, this contemporary incarnation of the comedic man-child finds its origins in Pee-wee Herman.
Seemingly just as committed to the drama was composer Marco Beltrami, whose loud, intense, unnerving score seems mashed together from the most propulsive elements of Bernard Herrmann's music for "Psycho" and Danny Elfman's music for "Pee-wee's Big Adventure."
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With that, he's envisioned a sort of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure for SpongeBob, in which the hapless hero sets out on a quest to find the balding King Neptune's treasured crown.
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Directed by Cathy Yan
Visuals
But Yan’s breakneck energy and quirky approach keep the movie as an entertaining slice of pop weirdness, like a grittier “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.”
Films like Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, The Goonies, and Jumanji are just a few of the films that I would watch on repeat throughout my childhood and as a teenager.
As Pee-wee Herman says in "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" to the woman who has a crush on him: "You don't want to get mixed up with a guy like me.
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The style of this film is not unlike Pee-wee's Big Adventure, as it follows a comically innocent weirdo around the country, through all sorts of strange adventures and characters.
Indications of Pee-wee’s superior ability to capture the childhood experience can be found in details like this, particularly when compared to other childhood films of the era—take Home Alone, for example, where we inexplicably see every room in the house but Kevin’s.