- Network: HBO
- Series Premiere Date: Mar 19, 2011
- Season #: 1
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30For the most part, The Pee-wee Herman Show on Broadway is stale sugary shtick on a candy-colored set with no new resonance--no undercurrents about childhood, or innocence, or even Pee-wee Herman.
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42While the acting and jokes are still solid, it's clear this particular iteration was meant for the stage.
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40Without the overwhelming nostalgia for this particular venue for Pee-wee and these supporting characters, I found The Pee-wee Herman Show on Broadway a long (close to 90 minutes) slog, cute in spots, but mainly just strange--a voyage through the fantasy life of a character I prefer to see fending for himself in a closer approximation of the real world.
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70Pee-wee was always a boy-man, but Reubens is pushing 60; when he is flying through the air singing "I'm the luckiest boy in the world" the words "Sunset Boulevard" do come unfortunately to mind. Still, fans of Pee-wee will no doubt delight in a return to those strange and halcyon days before the Wiggles and Blues Clues took over the world, when Barney was still Fred Flintstone's sidekick and not a purple dinosaur and Pee-wee's multi-generational appeal was subversive and unique.
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40To my eyes, in the end, those moments still don't make this show worth an hour and a half of a Saturday night. It just has too many giggly jokes about "toilet water." But if you're among those fans who feared a few years ago you'd lost Pee-wee forever, there's no arguing that you now have him back.
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88Reubens is getting a bit old for this, but Pee-wee's innocence, infantilism and camp haven't dated--there's a rebel in the ridiculousness. [21 Mar 2011, p.46]
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50It's a happy mix of childlike wonder and mildly adult humor--too mild for "Two and a Half Men," but maybe too adult for Saturday mornings--that allows Reubens to be timeless and yet topical. But again, only mildly so.
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50While it seems apparent that seeing the show live would be a hoot, it doesn't translate to television all that well--it just feels shrunken and confined by the medium.
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75The Pee-Wee Herman Show is manic, crazy, and most of all, a whole lot of, ahem, "fun."
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50It's mildly amusing, but it comes off as an extended appetizer, not a meal.
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75It's a long pull that can be fun and funny--and more than a wee bit tedious.
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60Even lensed for TV, the special isn't wholly satisfying, but for anyone who visited "Pee-wee's Playhouse" in the late '80s, the experience is good enough. As for those who might say dismissing the show at that is snobbish, I know you are, but what am I?
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40Although it is 90 minutes long, it feels much longer, and the truly smart laughs are few.
User score distribution:
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7
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