Pee-wee’s quest is quite the eccentric odyssey, as if audiences are taking a drug-addled trip through his playful nightmares.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 8, 2024

With Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Tim Burton arrives on the filmmaking scene fully formed, with a ghoulishly whimsical visual style and instinct for offbeat comedy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 13, 2024

Pee-wee Herman is and always will be a gift to mankind.

| Sep 5, 2024

The gender play, sexual politics and physical comedy shine as brightly as the 100-watt headlight on its star’s beloved bike.

| Dec 5, 2023

Not exactly indie, but definitely reflecting an independent spirit...

| Aug 21, 2023

It demonstrates not only Reubens’s unique gifts, but also the fact that Tim Burton really was a talented filmmaker once upon a time.

| Aug 18, 2023

It’s basically a John Waters movie for kids.

| Aug 14, 2023

The movie gets weirder and more divorced from anything resembling reality the longer it runs but that (I suppose) is part of its charm.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 16, 2023

Adventure is a well-produced showcase that sets [Pee-Wee Herman] firmly in line with classic clowns from Chaplin through Jerry Lewis.

| May 22, 2020

"Pee-wee's Big Adventure" isn't a movie but a collection of found objects from the garbage heap of low culture...

| Jan 2, 2018

Tim Burton's first (and best) movie...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 22, 2016

It's a true original -- a comedy maverick that looks and feels like no other movie I know.

| Jul 31, 2015

It's a bold attempt to do something dazzlingly original, although some of the gags are spectacularly unfunny and Pee-wee's nervous prattling can become irritating.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 31, 2015

Burton demonstrates his knack for building seemingly dynamic meta-worlds inside our own world, depicting Pee Wee's own journey as exciting, harrowing, and often times scary.

| Nov 1, 2014

The film's inventiveness is on display from the get-go.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 4, 2012

Chiefly successful because of its commitment to an artistic ideal: make something that looks, talks, feels, and moves like a cartoon.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 27, 2012

A purely creative movie that one must admit has no equal in cinema history (for better or worse). [Blu-ray]

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 14, 2011

But perhaps Pee-wee's appeal lies precisely in the slightly discomfiting uncertainty of his persona... insufferably giddy, occasionally malevolent, and completely indefatigable; demented, irritating, narcissistic -- and infectiously funny.

| Jan 25, 2011

Reubens always lets us feel superior to his creation, and when his character slips, as it does more than once in this first feature outing, his own condescension shows through.

| Feb 9, 2010

It's surreal, funny, clever and disarming in equal measures.

| Feb 9, 2010