The Pee-Wee Herman in this sequel to 1985’s Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) is very much an adult. He has a great girlfriend – a school teacher named Winnie (Penelope Ann Miller) with a big penchant for egg salad.
He has a great farm too – replete with a talking pig named Vance, brown cows who produce chocolate milk, giant produce plants and his pride and joy, a hot dog tree.
Did you expect any less from a domicile designed by everyone’s favourite idea and gadget man?
But when the failing Cabrini Circus blows into town in the middle of a huge storm and lands on Pee-Wee’s property, his whole talking-animal, prodigious egg salad world is turned upside down.
He falls in love with a pretty trapeze artist named Gina (Valeria Golino) and befriends the troupe patriarch Mace Montana (Kris Kristofferson) and Mace’s pocket-dwelling three-inch tall wife, Midge (Susan Tyrrell). He’s also got a scheme to save Mace’s circus – why not put Pee-Wee’s various farm wonders and agricultural marvels under the big top?
Even with the talking animals, the world that director Randal Kleiser (Grease, Blue Lagoon) puts Pee-Wee into is still a bit more literal, and a bit less whimsical, than the live-action cartoon landscape found in Tim Burton’s Big Adventure.
This was Pee-Wee the Dark. Unlike in Burton’s film, Pee-Wee is actually reviled by the townspeople and in a similarly uncharacteristic trait, Pee-Wee actually has a libido (symbolised in his aggressive, nearly fetishistic desire to stroke women’s hair).
Pee-Wee also encounters a very adult romantic dilemma on his hands – two great women, and only one grey-suited, red bow-tied inventor/farmer to go around! There’s even a hot n’ heavy make-out session with Gina. It was the Caligula of Pee-Wee movies . . .
Pee-Wee Herman Paul Reubens
Winnie
Penelope Ann Miller
Mace Montana
Kris Kristofferson
Gina Piccolapupula
Valeria Golino
Vance the Pig
Wayne White
Midge Montana
Susan Tyrrell
Mr Ryan
Albert Henderson
Otis
Jack Murdock
Deke
David Byrd
Mrs Dill
Mary Jackson
Mrs Haynes
Frances Bay
Joe the Blacksmith
Leo Gordon
Pearl
Anne Seymour
Sheriff
Kenneth Tobey
Cock
Jay Robinson
Bunny
Eve Smith
Paolo Piccolapupula
Andrew Shalit
Orin the Strongman
Franco Columbu
Snowball the Clown
Terrence Mann
Clownie
Vance Colvig Jr.
Oscar the Liontamer
Matthias Hues
Duke the Dog-Faced Boy
Benicio Del Toro
Big John
Kevin Peter Hall
Zelda the Bearded Lady
Lynne Marie Stewart
Del the Human Cannonball
John Sherrod
Shim the Half Man/Half Woman
Joseph Arias
Ruth
Helen Infield Siff
Dot
Carol Infield Sender
Honey
Judy Rubenfeld
Herman
Milton Rubenfeld
Andy
Mihaly ‘Michu’ Meszaros
He has a great farm too – replete with a talking pig named Vance, brown cows who produce chocolate milk, giant produce plants and his pride and joy, a hot dog tree.
