Pee-wee’s Big Adventure(1985)
Warner Bros. Aug 9, 1985
When eccentric man-child Pee-wee Herman gets his beloved bike stolen in broad daylight, he sets out across the U.S. on the adventure of his life.
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Technical Specifications
Sound Mix: Dolby Stereo
Other Details
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English,French
Summaries
Plot Summary
- Pee-Wee Herman wakes from a dream in which he has won the Tour de France. After having breakfast, Pee-Wee decides to ride his bike down to the local shopping center. The bicycle itself is heavily customized, tricked out with specialized fenders, a spring-loaded ejection seat, custom wheel caps and a gold license plate declaring it's his property. Pee Wee keeps it in a hidden shed protected by a coded theft system and camouflaged by a bush.Pee Wee spends a short period of time polishing and admiring his bike before he meets up with Francis Buxton, a local and spoiled overgrown rich kid who wants to buy Pee-Wee's bike as a birthday gift for himself. Pee-Wee rebukes this offer and ridicules Francis, before cycling off, with Francis shouting after him that "he'll be sorry."Pee-Wee arrives at the shopping center, where he chains his bike to a clown statue, before stopping off at a nearby magic shop. Next, he goes to the local bicycle shop to procure a new horn. While there, an employee and friend of Pee-Wee's named Dottie, attempts to ask Pee-Wee on a date, which he refuses, telling her he's too much of a "loner" and a "rebel" for her. Pee-Wee then returns to his bike... only to find the chains destroyed and his bike gone. He returns to the bike shop and yells for Dottie and faints.Pee-Wee goes to the police, but they are unable to help him. When asked if anyone might have really wanted his bike, Pee-Wee surmises that Francis Buxton must have taken it. Pee-Wee sneaks into the Buxton's mansion, and forces Francis to confess. However, Francis' father explains that Francis couldn't have stolen the bike, since Francis and his father have been at the mansion setting up his birthday train set all morning.Pee-Wee is still determined to find his bike, and begins to post fliers and goes on the radio to alert people about it. Unknown to Pee-Wee, Francis did have a hand in the theft of his bike, hiring a shady guy to steal the bike for him. However, with Pee-Wee not giving up the search, Francis becomes nervous and pays the hired guy extra to get rid of the bicycle.Down on his luck, Pee-Wee wanders the rainy streets of town - scaring off a small gang merely by hissing at them - and visits a phony psychic, who convinces Pee-Wee that his bike is in the basement of The Alamo. Pee-Wee then sets out on his epic journey to get there.His first encounter while hitchhiking is with an escaped criminal named Mickey driving a stolen Edsel Corsair, who was arrested for cutting the tag off a mattress. Even with his criminal background, Pee-Wee still takes a shine to Mickey, and helps him get past a police roadblock. That evening, while driving, Pee-Wee almost gets them killed when he tries to swerve around a series of (impossible) turns in the road. Mickey has had enough of his eccentric travel-mate and orders Pee-Wee out of the car, before driving off into the dark night.Pee-Wee next hitches a ride from a rather strange trucker named Large Marge, who tells him a creepy story about "the worst accident I ever seen" which happened 10 years earlier on the very same road they're on. Pee Wee hangs on her every word until her face suddenly becomes horribly monstrous and he screams before she changes back. After dropping him off at a truck stop restaurant, and telling Pee-Wee "Be sure an' tell 'em Large Marge sent ya!" Pee-Wee is further shocked to find that Large Marge was killed ten years ago to the day... and that he was riding with her ghost.After the ordeal, Pee-Wee attempts to have a meal, but finds that his wallet is gone (which was stolen earlier by the phony psychic). After washing and drying dishes in the kitchen to pay for his meal, a friendly waitress named Simone asks him to watch the sunrise with her. They sit together in the mouth of a Tyrannosaurus Rex statue nearby, and while watching the sunrise, Simone and Pee-Wee discuss their dreams. Simone's dream is to one day go to Paris, but she feels her boyfriend Andy won't let her. Pee-Wee encourages her to follow her dreams. However, as they exit the statue at dawn, the hulking Andy is waiting to clobber Pee-Wee, thinking 'the worst' has happened.Pee-Wee escapes on a nearby freight train, where he runs into a hobo named Jack, who then proceeds to sing all manner of songs until Pee-Wee finally jumps from the train... which just happened to have arrived in San Antonio, Texas.Pee-Wee quickly seeks out the Alamo and takes a boring and sappy tour, only to find that it doesn't have a basement! Dejected and back to square one, Pee-Wee attempts to take a bus home, when he runs into Simone, who explains that she left Andy, and is planning to go to Paris and follow her dreams. Shortly after she leaves, her jealous boyfriend Andy appears, and on seeing Pee-Wee, gives chase. The chase leads them to a rodeo, where Pee-Wee, disguised as a cowboy, rides a bull. He stays on for a record amount of time but is thrown off. When he's spotted by Andy, the thug tries to catch him but is chased off by another bull. However, Pee-Wee suffers a slight concussion, and lapses into a temporary state of amnesia. When the small crowd that revived him asks if he can remember anything, he says he remembers the Alamo and they all cheer.Wandering the road lonely and lost, Pee-Wee finds a tavern, the private hangout of a gang named "Satan's Helpers", a loud and rowdy group of bikers. While trying to make a phone call, he shushes them. They eject him. After accidentally knocking over their bikes, the bikers are intent on killing Pee-Wee, but give into his 'last request,' and watch as he dons a pair of white platform loafers and dances to the song "Tequila". Having won them over, the bikers then give Pee-wee one of their motorcycles, and send him on his way. Unfortunately, Pee-Wee's first time on a motorcycle proves disastrous, and he crashes shortly thereafter. The gang escorts his ambulance to the hospital.After being rushed to the hospital, Pee-Wee has a strange dream about a group of clown-faced doctors trying to repair his bicycle and then having it dropped in a flaming cauldron, with Francis nearby, dressed as the Devil. Pee Wee wakes up a little later to see a television program, showing his bike had been donated to a child actor on the Warner Brothers studio lot. Immediately regaining his memory, Pee-Wee heads to Hollywood, California. After sneaking into the studio's backlot, he discovers that his bike is a prop in a movie about an orphaned kid who leaves it to the orphanage before he sets out on his own. Disguised as a nun, he steals the bicycle from the set.After leading the studio's security on a wild chase through various sound stages, including a Godzilla set, a beach party setup, one dedicated to Christmas and Santa and past the band Twisted Sister shooting a music video, Pee-Wee manages to escape from the studio, but not before finding a burning pet store nearby. Pee-Wee manages to rescue almost all the animals, but in the wake of his heroism, is arrested by the police for his transgressions on the studio lot.However, after hearing his side of the story and events, one of the studio's executives sees the potential for a movie based on Pee-Wee's 'big adventure.' Pee-Wee agrees, only to have the film made into an action film starring James Brolin as a spy and Morgan Fairchild as his love interest. Pee-Wee himself is relegated to a cameo as a hotel bellhop with a dubbed-over voice. Even so, Pee-Wee is thrilled, and invites all his friends and people he met on his trip to view the picture at the local drive-in. Mickey is there, still imprisoned and heavily guarded. Pee Wee gives him a footlong hotdog, but the guards find a hacksaw blade that Pee Wee had tried to pass Mickey. Simone is there with her new French boyfriend, Pierre. And his friends in the biker gang are there too. Francis even shows up, persuading a press junket about what "good friends" he and Pee-Wee are. Francis even attempts to sit on Pee-Wee's bike for a photo-op. Pee Wee of course wants no part of it but realizes his opportunity to have his revenge and invites Francis on. With the brat in place, Pee Wee triggers the bike's ejection seat and Francis is sent hurtling skyward.Dottie is there too, having finally gotten her date with him. Pee-Wee wants to leave early, admitting he doesn't need to see the whole film, since he already lived it.
Storyline
- The cartoonish and childish character Pee-wee Herman goes on a big adventure for the first time ever when his beloved shiny new bicycle is stolen by his nemesis Francis Buxton, a fellow man-child and neighborhood rich "kid." And he sets off on an obsessive cross-country journey, determined to recover it. Pee-wee's awkward and childish attempts to be cool and mature. — Anthony Pereyra {hypersonic91@yahoo.com} The love of Pee-wee Herman's life is his bicycle. When it is stolen, he is send on a wild cross country adventure after a fortune teller tells him his bicycle is in the basement of the Alamo. Along the way, Pee-wee encounters an escaped convict, a waitress with wanderlust and a jealous boyfriend, and a mysterious female truck driver. — Ray Hamel <hamel@primate.wisc.edu> Pee-wee's bicycle, a material object he desires above all human relationships, is stolen. The journey he is forced to make exposes him to the land that suburbia forgot, a mythical working-class America filled with truck stops, waitresses and runaway convicts. This is Tim Burton's remake of Vittorio De Sica's Italian neo-realist classic, The Bicycle Thief. middle class in America. — Steve Akers <sakers@mail.utexas.edu> Pee-wee Herman, a man who is handicapped by natural immaturity has a happy go lucky life, his house is full of toys and gadgets and has a dog named "Speck". He also has a bicycle which he loves likes its his own child. However, his enemy Francis Buxton, who is also naturally immature and rich covets Pee-wee's bike, then as Pee-wee was shopping for more toys and things for his house, he noticed that his bike was gone, he immediately blames this on Francis as he believes that Francis has stolen it, but Francis claims that he has nothing to do with it. This is when tries to search for it, then he was told by a fortune teller, that it is in the Alamo, which is in San Antonio, Texas. Pee-wee is determined to find his bike. — John Wiggins
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