On the 11th of January 1974, the legendary trucker Large Marge lost her life in a tragic road accident.

Not really, of course; the ghost of Large Marge is just one of the numerous kooky characters that children’s TV star, eternal man-child Pee-Wee Herman, encounters during 1985 movie Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.

Pee-Wee (played by Paul Reubens – though for many years, Reubens maintained the illusion of Herman as a genuine person, appearing in character as him wherever he went in public) has his cherished bike stolen and embarks on a cross country odyssey to retrieve it.

Though Pee-Wee recovered his beloved bike, in the real world – just as with Large Marge in his first movie – we’ve now lost Pee-Wee himself, as Reubens passed away at the age of 70, following a long and private battle with cancer.

Reubens was a gifted, charming and prolific actor even beyond his beloved man-child Pee-Wee persona.

The stories pouring out on social media in the wake of his passing attest to this; by all accounts, we’ve lost a truly unique and almost universally loved individual.

The passing of Paul Reubens has hit me hard; not least because he never lost that anarchic, childlike spirit. He just seemed to be forever young – and it never occurred to me that he may one day depart this world.

I’ve long admired his work – Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure has been one of my favourite films for decades and always will be, but he’s been brilliant in so many other projects too, not least the lesser seen, underrated Mystery Men and, more recently, his cameo in fantastic vampire sitcom What We Do In The Shadows.

As so many people are now saying, he was someone who told us it was ok to be weird. That you should never lose sight of the child inside you as you get older. Both admirable messages; though it’s worth noting that he also stood up for and subversively represented queer culture in many of his personal works, bringing a thoughtful diversity to his show Pee-Wee’s Playhouse in a beautifully understated way.

Though Reubens has passed on, his spirit will live on forever in the hearts and minds of generations of fans; the joy and laughter he brought to so many of us will never be forgotten.

It felt right to revisit my thoughts on Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, so here we have my retrospective review of the 1985 cult classic, which remains a unique cinematic odyssey and one of my absolute favourite movies.

Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure – A Retrospective

Reubens always had a knack for surrounding himself with wildly creative, enormously talented outsiders.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that Tim Burton – the perennial Hollywood outsider, who somehow ended up making hugely successful, mainstream Hollywood blockbusters – was given his directorial debut with Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.

It’s a Burton film as much as it’s a Pee-Wee Herman movie; sweetly innocent, but also cheekily subversive, incredibly witty and full of brilliant gags. It takes a skewed look at Americana through the innocent gaze of its main character, who gets himself out of serious danger numerous times with his sheer likeability.

Talking of Burton, the guy really hates clowns – and even gets to throw in some nightmarish imagery for the coulrophobic.

Burton even makes an on screen cameo himself!

There’s so many classic set pieces in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, so many iconic scenes and unique, timelessly hilarious, endlessly quotable moments – but it seems daft to spoil them here if you’ve never seen it before.

The final chase sequence is at once a love letter to classic movies and a genuinely hilarious action scene in one – and the cinematic adaptation of Pee-Wee’s adventure (with the real Pee-Wee’s incredible cameo) is a real cherry on top of an already delicious cake.

It never got the critical reception it deserved and, after a real life incident with Paul Reubens and an adult cinema (in which nothing illegal or even particularly scandalous took place in my opinion), public opinion drastically cooled on Pee-Wee in the 90s.

However, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is now quite rightly revered as a cult classic – though it has a few elements that tie it to the mid-80s (BMX bikers, Mr. T breakfast cereal and…Twisted Sister?), it is for the most part a timeless film, still as silly, funny and brilliantly sweet as it always was.

Be sure and tell ’em Large Marge sent ya.

And, alongside Marge, rest in peace Paul Reubens. Thank you for a lifetime of laughs and surprisingly tender moments. You will truly be missed.