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Reviews
Pee-wee's Big Holiday (2016)
The Best of the Pee-Wee Films
Perhaps this is sacrilege, but I found Pee-Wee's Big Holiday to be the best of his three films. (I agree that the biker-bar scene from Big Adventure is the best individual scene—but this film is more consistent in tone and execution.) Pee Wee's goal is to get to Joe Manganiello's birthday party in New York City after the two bond over milkshakes and root-beer barrels in Pee Wee's home town of Fairville.
All we know is that Pee-Wee never has left home and that NYC is a long way east. Joe zooms back to his penthouse in Manhattan on his motorcycle. After looking for a sign as to whether or not to go cross-country to New York (and being hit on the head by a Big Apple), Pee Wee hops in his car and is immediately kidnapped by three female bank robbers (Pepper, Freckles, and Bella, aka Pee-Wee). He's left tied up in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere—but he hitches a ride east with a traveling salesman vending the sort of gag gifts that Pee-Wee finds irresistible.
Pee-Wee's misadventures en route to NYC all are amusing and clever. There is an overt theme of friendship and tolerance, as well as an underlying theme of homosexuality being a-okay—but this latter is embodied in a sly and funny way. Whether Paul Reubens himself is gay or bi- scarcely matters—and Pee-Wee himself encounters several would-be girlfriends along the way, including Bella.
For me, the encounter with an Amish community entertained by Pee-Wee's balloon antics was the best scene in the film—perhaps because I'm from Pennsylvania. The action never flags, and the large cast is consistently strong. Pee-Wee's punning is scintillating throughout.
Let's hope Paul Reubens soon will host Saturday Night Live in character. His perpetuation of Pee-Wee in 2016 is utterly on-target and satisfying.
Damsels in Distress (2011)
Not A Whit Lost Since the Last Days of Disco
Life, perhaps, in an allusion. Therefore, gentle reader, please move on to a different review if you don't smile in Pavlovian fashion when hearing uttered the name "Whit Stillman."
Recently I learned that Stillman's Last Days of Disco has yet to break even in sales. Alas, how long we NCAs (see below) have waited since they booked that clown! Damsels in Distress, gratefully, is scarcely stillborn-- rather, it's more Still. If you have worn laser holes into your Criterion-Collection copies of Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco, then Damsels will not disappoint. However, if you are unfamiliar with the signature dialogue, settings, motifs, and characters of this returned- to-America auteur, perhaps Damsels will disappoint. Here, I write for the initiates. (And for these, I whisper, "Watch closely: the professor and one of the two off-campus waitresses are familiar friends from the trilogy!")
What's to tell? There are four principle characters, all matriculated at Ivy-Shrouded Seven Oaks College after prepping in the usual way. While it is true that Greta Gerwig's Violet is the heroine, Carrie MacLemore as Heather, Megalyn Echikunwoke as Rose, and Analeigh Tipton as Lily make Damsels another ensemble piece.
I live in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, and while many who bedroom here commute to Manhattan, it is the home of Mack Trucks and Bethlehem Steel, which is sufficient explanation for why during both my first viewing of Metropolitan and of Damsels (in the selfsame indy- theatre complex), I annoyed many in the audience with my vulgar guffaws and howls of laughter while the rest of the moviegoers were silent.
Stillman, gratifyingly, is at the top of his game in Damsels. As with the trilogy, I will never grow tired of watching this film. I found Damsels as pitch-perfect as the trilogy, and while not so small- budgeted as Metropolitan, Damsels finds Stillman able to deadpan as much mirth as ever without the expenses of Disco. I do hope Mr. Stillman does not keep his Nearly Cultist Aficionados waiting so long before his next cinematic venture.
Neither my wife nor I were born with Stillman's or his characters' class prerogatives, and our Phi Beta Kappa keys from the familiar safety school of our locale--namely, Lehigh University--have done us absolutely no good for over thirty years, at least with respect to our wannabe aspirations, much like those of Luis Buñuel. We have an old poster of Barcelona on the wall of my workspace, which is slightly more commodious than a railroad-apartment's standard room.
While unfit to play croquet with either Mr. Stillman or Jamie Johnson, I wish to thank Mr. S. for bringing delight to those with the ears and eyes to hear and see. We do associate with Episcopalians, but none of these sired débutant progeny waiting in the Hamptons for the season to begin.