Driving by his deep love and admiration for his red bicycle, Pee Wee, a young guy with a child mind, goes in a great adventure that, in order to restore it, the thing that changes his character.
Children should love the film and adults will be dismayed by the light brushstrokes with which Paul Reubens (one of three credited screenwriters, but star-billed under his stage name, Pee-wee Herman) suggests touches of Buster Keaton and Eddie Cantor.
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.
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.
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.
